The Godless One (21 page)

We exist to be a beacon for
God

Since when did God need a
beacon
? Ari wondered. To his foreign ears,
it sounded as though the Deity was a pilot in need of a compass.
But he appreciated the next line on the program:

*Please stand as you are
able

The service had begun at 8:30 and,
judging from the agenda, was almost halfway concluded. He was not
overly dismayed to have missed the Prelude, the Time of Greeting,
the Words of Welcome and Announcements, the *Presentation of Light
(‘A Mighty Fortress is Our God’), the Sharing of Joys and Concerns,
the Silence and Pastoral Prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, the *Hymn
(‘Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing’), the *Psalter, the *Gloria
Patri, the Offertory, the *Doxology—

There. The hymn that had just concluded
had included the phrase, ‘Praise God, from whom all blessings
flow’, exactly what was written in the program. Next on the program
was the *Gospel Lesson.

Feeling a bit like someone late for the
theater, Ari slipped as quickly as possible into the nave. The door
hinges swung smoothly, yet in the brief silence following the
Doxology he garnered several curious glances. Pastor Grainger saw
Ari as he was walking towards the pulpit and produced a quick
smile. Or it might have been a grimace, with Ari’s presence
reminding him of the fiasco at Powhatan CC. Where was Samir Salman,
now? On a military transport to Guantanamo?

While Grainger stepped up on his podium
and looked down on the fifty or so parishioners, Ari sought a
congenial spot. The third pew from the back was completely empty,
as were many others. He slid onto the maple seat and folded his
hands over his open program.

"All rise…" Grainger was lifting his
arms. Ari found the pastor's white robe and green stole mildly
off-putting. He was not sure why. Perhaps because it seemed too
lighthearted. If you were going to have a religion at all, he
thought, it should be as dark as existence. There was a shuffling
in the large hall as everyone stood.

"Our text for the day is from the New
American Standard Version, Exodus 2:22: 'Then she gave birth to a
son, and he named him Gershom, for he said, 'I have been a
sojourner in a foreign land…'

"Be seated…"

Grainger embraced the gathering with a
gesture. "Ah, my hardy friends! Never let it be said that the
Commonwealth of Virginia can be crippled by a quarter inch of
snow." Ari was startled by the chuckles from the congregation,
which erupted into guffaws when Grainger nodded at the empty pews
and added, "However, I see not all of my flock could handle the
blizzard."

All right, so Pastor Grainger was a bit
of a ham, and American religion was not one that put all joking
aside. There were worse things, Ari thought. He noted that among
the missing was Howie Nottoway, who must have found the slippery
slope on Beach Court Lane too much for him. Grainger improved his
thespian credentials by looking down somberly at the top of the
pulpit for several silent moments while the laughter subsided. Then
he raised his head, a totally different expression on his face.
Sadness and reflection.

"I think our scripture for the day is
particularly fitting. I'm sure you have all heard by now about the
loss of our dear brother and sister in Christ, Mustafa and Akila
Zewail."

So the news was out. Ari had not gotten
around to looking at the morning headlines, preoccupied as he had
been with the picture from Mosul. Had the public any details of the
crime? There were a few murmurs of surprise from the pews, mostly
from older parishioners who were not securely tied into the Net.
Hearing this, Grainger nodded.

"Yes, it’s true...their bodies were
found in their home the day before yesterday. The police only
announced it yesterday evening. No details have been released, but
that scarcely matters. For someone to have undergone such travail
in a foreign land and to have come here seeking freedom...and then
for this to happen...is bad enough. The details are
immaterial."

What a precious little
gossip
, Ari thought.
Tell that to the headless corpse. And aren’t you the one who
told me Mustafa was Egyptian? Since when was Egypt so
awful?

"I don't intend to proceed with a
eulogy for the Zewails. You will be notified of the time and date
of the memorial once the arrangements have been finalized. I just
wanted to say how aggrieved we are by their demise, and how much we
will miss them."

Ari wondered if he was reluctant to say
more before he knew the reason behind their deaths. If the murders
were drug related, he might want to tone down his encomium. Jumping
the gun was an option to be avoided.

Grainger launched into his sermon, a
grating paean to blandness. He followed for a short while the
'stranger in a strange land' theme, though he tended to take with
one hand while giving away with the other. One had to tolerate
other cultures, but one had to shun other cultures and their evil
ways. One had to embrace strange lifestyles while simultaneously
kicking sinners in the teeth, and somehow those sinners also
happened to be people with the very lifestyles you were supposed to
tolerate. Ari found the whole sequence incomprehensible, and
suspected Grainger was struggling to jibe commandments from On High
with dictates from the upper tier of his church's bureaucracy. He
seemed to sense his own contradictions and retreated to safer
drivel about Jesus. When Ari recalled some of the imams he had
known, the way so many of them spat out their words (the spit was
quite visible) with their violent rhetoric, which tended to focus
upon unessential enemies to the exclusion of essential life, he
decided Grainger wasn't so bad. Studying the tame, rather
office-like interior of the church, he thought no one would ever
see a need to plant a bomb here. All-in-all, it was rather
reassuring.

His eyes wandered over the members of
the congregation in front of him. His attention fell on a man in
the third row, sitting erect and attentive. He spent the rest of
the sermon trying to determine if he was Marine or Army, officer or
enlisted man, veteran or some Stateside logician. Was he on leave,
or was he due for redeployment next week?

When Grainger stopped talking and
invited everyone forward for communion, Ari took up a hymn book and
perused it intently. He actually learned a few songs before
everyone finished their grape juice and reseated themselves. Then,
to another tune, this time from a hidden organ, people began filing
out of the pews. Passing him, some nodded and smiled, some just
nodded and a few pretended he didn’t exist. The man he had been
observing rose and gave his hand to the woman who had been sitting
next to him, a plump woman who, when she turned, presented a
pleasing face. Both her and the man wore sorrowful expressions.
Could they be mourning Mustafa and Akila?

As they approached Ari, the man noticed
him sitting in isolation and offered a puzzled but friendly smile.
He nodded at the woman, then let go of her hand and sidled through
the pews to Ari.

"Ben Torson," he said, holding out his
hand. Ari stood and took the firm clasp.

"Ari Ciminon."

"I've never seen you here, before,"
said Ben. "Welcome to Southside. We hope you decide to make it your
second home."

"You are very gracious," said Ari
amiably. "I've only been in Richmond a few months. I thought it
time to do some exploring."

"Well, you've explored the right place.
These are good people. Don't mind a few frowns. They used to shoot
Mustafa and Akila the same look, until they got to know them
better."

I guarantee they did not
know them at all, my friend. Nor did you.

"'Mustafa...is that the man your
minister was talking about?" Ari asked innocently.

"It's terrible," Ben said. "Someone
broke into their home and...it was like being back in the
Sandbox."

"You're in the military service?" Ari
asked politely, knowing that the ‘Sandbox’ was one of the kinder
nicknames soldiers had given Iraq.

"Was," said Ben, withdrawing both his
hand and his spirit. A spirit that Ari felt compelled to
pursue.

"Ah, you were in Iraq? A terrible war,
terrible."

"Yes." Ben seemed to give an inner
shake. "I thought things like this were behind me. Mustafa and
Akila were good friends. I would have gone and checked at the
house, but Pastor Grainger said he had done all he could to reach
them." There was a trace of rebuke in his tone, directed at
himself.

"Oh, your...pastor?...is a good man. I
met him the other day. He took me out to the prison to help
communicate with one of the prisoners who doesn't speak
English."

"You're..." Ben began climbing the long
ladder of correctness to find the polite way to ask Ari if he was
from the Middle East.

"I'm..." And then Ari hesitated. For
some reason, he could not bring himself to tell this man that he
was Italian. Something about Ben said all games stopped
here.

Mistaking Ari's abrupt silence for some
form of ethnic embarrassment, Ben nodded and turned to the plump
woman. "This is Becky, my wife."

Becky's size made her approach through
the pew behind Ari's cumbersome and slightly embarrassing. As she
squeezed past a hymnal rack several books were dislodged and fell
to the floor.

"Oh," she said lowly, trying to bend
over to pick them up.

"No, no," said her husband, leaning
over the seat to retrieve the hymnals.

Glowing with despair, Becky held out
her hand. Ari had not yet accustomed himself to shaking women's
hands. He recalled the vigorous shaking he had gotten from
Jennifer, Samir Salman's alleged lawyer, and prepared himself for a
whiplashing. But Becky's handshake was gentle and
becoming.

"The men go to war and the women eat,"
she said, releasing Ari's hand and presenting her body with a
spread of her arms. "This is collateral damage."

"You're fine," Ben said
assuagingly.

"If you had let me sign up and go with
you, I wouldn't be in this mess."

"You personally, and not you as a
woman, were not made for war," Ben said, and repeated, "You're
fine."

Ari, usually so deft at timing the need
to the moment, found himself oppressed by the challenge Ben
presented. Inside of this American soldier was an answer, but one
that could not be weaned or schemed out of him. Not that it could
not be done, but Ari did not feel such tactics were
appropriate.

"Do you mind telling me which unit you
served with?" he asked gently, like a sommelier posing a wine list
to an experienced customer.

"1
^st
Armored." He could not keep
the pride out of his voice. He wasn't trying to.

The answer sent Ari into a spin. He
knew this man. For Ghaith Ibrahim, seeing a man's identity card
meant he knew him on sight. Seeing a man for six intense minutes
meant Ari Ciminon knew him for life. Ari glanced at Becky's
benevolent, sad face, knew he would be committing a cardinal sin
against his own security if he pursued what was on his mind...and
pursued it.

"Specialist Benjamin T. Torson, U.S.
Army. On April 6, 2005 a dear friend of yours hid himself behind
some crates in a DRASH maintenance facility in Baghdad and
committed suicide." Ari also knew the name of the victim, because
he had seen his body resting against the crates, the barrel of his
M4 resting where the head had been. The name on his blouse was
still legible. "You were distraught. You went into the courtyard.
You were weeping. You told your sergeant that you were going to
follow your friend to the grave. The sergeant...a man every bit as
good as your pastor...spoke...talked you out of committing the same
grave sin. You carried on, like a good soldier."

Ben was staring at him in
horror.

"I know this because I was there.
Perhaps you don't recognize me because I was wearing a ski mask at
the time."

The lower part of Ben's eyes seemed to
lift up, pushing his whites into his brow. He dropped into the seat
with a gasp. From behind, Becky took him by the shoulders, while
glaring over Ben's head at Ari.

"Sir, I don't know who you
are—"

"It's all right." Ben patted her hand.
"And it's true."

"I beg you not to tell anyone that I
said this," Ari said.

"Why?" Ben asked, struggling to
breathe.

"Several lives are at stake. Including,
I must admit, my own."

Ari was aware that his mental scales
had gone awry. As a young teen, he had stood on the sandstone
parapet of the Assassin’s Gate with his friend Omar, howling
delightedly at Iranian F-5’s scudding close to the ground as they
strafed the city. He knew it was dangerous, that one the enemy
pilots might mistake him for a combatant (or a worthless civilian
worth a bullet) and tilt his wings in their direction. Later, but
not that much later, as a young sniper, he would be forced to time
the moment to squeeze the trigger of his Tabuk before his distant
target guided his pack mules behind a turn in a valley, knowing
that this might be his last opportunity, but also knowing a miss
would alert the smuggler and make future attempts more difficult or
impossible. Later still, in the Byzantine court of the Imperial
Palace, choosing your friends (and enemies) was a life or death
commonplace, with promotions and demotions secondary
considerations. On the battlefield, of course, Chance ruled, but
there were still tiny crevices where the right judgment could save
your skin, as well as the lives of the men under your command.
Ari’s acceptance of CENTCOM’s invitation to come to America had
been relatively easy. Of course, anything to save Rana and his
surviving son had to be weighed against the fact that the
invitation came from the very people who had killed his other two
boys. But Ari’s enemies, of which there were many, would not
hesitate to kill Rana, who lay helpless in Ibn Sina Hospital after
her transfer from Saddam Medical City. She was still in need of
medical care. In his eyes, there was no choice in the
matter.