The Taste of Fear (11 page)

Two years later The Cleo’s revenue was up forty-four percent while room occupancy had rocketed from sixty-three to ninety-five percent. Sal was promoted to vice president of finance. Over the next ten years he championed a string of successes, which included securing a seventy-million-dollar long term mortgage investment from a life insurance giant, the first deal of its kind, to build the largest and glitziest casino in Atlantic City.

Following this, Sal was the driving force behind the creation of the luxury management company Star International, which put up five-star resorts in Mexico, the Bahamas, and Jamaica. In the summer of ’95, after the president and CEO of Star suffered a stroke on the seventh hole of Poipu Bay Golf Course in Kauai, Frank, who was chairman of the board, nominated Sal for the top position. The vote was unanimous. At thirty-three years old Sal became the youngest CEO of any company to earn a ranking on Fortune 500 that year.

Then disaster struck. Police found Frank’s mutilated body in a dumpster in Manhattan’s Little Italy. Sal interviewed nearly fifty ex-soldiers before settling on Danny Zamir as his “security advisor.” Danny tracked down Frank’s killer, a Columbia Law student named Giuseppe Adamo who was the son of a gangster Frank had knocked off back in the early eighties. Danny took Sal to a ramshackle building on the Lower West Side where the punk was being held. The room smelled like a monkey house. Adamo was lying on the floor, dehydrated and emaciated, surrounded by his own excrement. Sal rolled him over so he could look him in the eyes. Then he left, to let Danny do what he had to do.

Sal kept Danny around as his security chief, but he never again used him for anything resembling the Adamo thing. Until now, that is. Because Don Xi had tried to kill him, and that was simply something he couldn’t forgive and forget.

Rocco, Beautiful Bernie, and Crazy Frank would have all concurred.

“We’ll land over there,” Cooper announced suddenly.

He told Kitoi their coordinates over the radio, then pulled the chord that opened the parachute valve. He remained holding it as the balloon sunk through the air. They came at the ground surprisingly fast, but Cooper bounced the basket across the flat savanna like a stone skipping water until they slowed to a gentle rest.

“Try that in a herd of wildebeest and see what happens,” he bellowed. “Lo! There’s our ride.”

Sal followed Cooper’s finger and spotted the Hilux angling toward them from the southwest, shooting up a contrail of dust. When the truck arrived two minutes later, they packed up the balloon and loaded it into the flatbed.

Sal and Scarlett didn’t say a word to each other during the long trip back to camp.

“She believes you are in Germany again?”

Jahja nodded. He was a salesman for a German pharmaceutical company. In the past he had often traveled for business to visit clients. Those trips had ceased after he was burned. The sales director had never told him the burns were the reason for keeping him at the London office, hidden away, out of sight. But a lot of people no longer told him what they were really thinking. Regardless, the decline in business travel coincided with an increase in personal travel, most of which was to come here, to Dar, to visit his brother and his associates.

Sara was never the wiser.

“You will see her again,” Qasim said.

“Do you believe that?”

“If Allah wishes it, yes.” He stabbed out another cigarette in a fresh ashtray. “You are not having second thoughts, are you, brother?”

For a moment images of London—the good times in London—flashed through Jahja’s mind: his wedding at Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire, the birth of Hana at St. Bartholomew’s, Hana’s first steps at their South Bank flat. Then, as always, those images vanished as quickly as they had come, replaced by scenes from the day his life changed forever.

He had been in Algeria, visiting his parents in his ancestral town of Tamanrasset. They had all been at Friday evening service at the mosque he had attended since he was a child. He and his father were in the main hall, a barren room devoid of furniture, statues, and pictures; Islam did not condone any form of representation of Allah. Sara, Hana, and his mother were with the rest of the woman in a separate area closed off with panels of fabric. Everybody, however, was faced toward the
mihrab
—the niche in the wall that denoted the direction of Mecca. They were reciting the first chapter of the Qur’an when there was a thunderous explosion and the high ceiling blew inward. Jahja was knocked unconscious, waking up in a hospital sometime later, where he received news that his father had perished—and where he saw himself in a mirror for the first time after the bandages were removed.

Multiple Arab-speaking television networks reported the destruction was the result of a stray American cruise missile. They cited twenty-three dead and forty-seven injured. Jahja knew this to be the truth because he knew many of the victims personally. The Pentagon and U.S. mainstream corporate media dismissed this reality with “the claims of civilian casualties could not be independently verified.”

An all too familiar rage churned inside Jahja.

“No,” he told his brother. “I am not having second thoughts.”

“Come then,” Qasim said, standing. “Let me show you what you have no doubt been waiting to see.”

They went downstairs to the attached garage where two white vans were parked side by side. Both were several years old and slightly beat up. Qasim handed Jahja a set of keys and pointed to the van on the left. Jahja unlocked and opened the tailgate doors. The entire cargo body was packed with oxygen and acetylene tanks, bags of aluminum nitrate and ammonium nitrate fertilizer, and truck batteries. Nestled in the center of it all was a small detonation device. The bomb was nearly identical to the two used to destroy the American embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi exactly ten years ago, which killed 224 people, blinded 150, and injured thousands more.

Jahja nodded his approval. “Everybody else is ready?”

“Everybody is ready.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We wait until tomorrow,” Qasim said, smiling.

“I know what I heard,” she said stubbornly.

“You’re going way overboard here.”

“What did Don Xi tell Danny?”

“The name of the man who set the Prince Tower on fire.”

“And you wanted this information so you could . . . ?”

“What are you implying?”

“Danny’s going to kill him, isn’t he?”

“Don Xi?”

“Someone!” Scarlett blurted. “Don Xi. The man who set the fire. I don’t know! Don’t play dumb with me.”

Sal stared at her for a long moment. Then he turned away. He shrugged out of his jacket and micro fleece pullover. He messed leisurely through the clothes in his suitcase, chose a cashmere sweater, and pulled it on over his white undershirt. Finally he looked at her again. “I’m going to the other tent,” he said in an all-too-reasonable tone that infuriated her.

She stepped in front of his path. “You’re not walking away.”

“I’m not discussing this with you right now. You’re not thinking straight. Why don’t you go and lie down for a while?”

“Don’t patronize me, Sal,” she said icily. “Who are you?”

“Who am I?” he snapped, and something dangerous sparkled in his eyes, something she had only seen in their darkest fights. “You want my street name? My secret identity? Maybe you want to see the costume I wear at night when I go around having affairs and killing people? Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? The affair? You won’t drop it, will you? You’ll never drop it. You’ll never trust me again. Anytime something comes up—a late night at the office, a business trip, a phone conversation with Danny—you’re going to automatically think the worst. Well, fuck that. I don’t think I can deal with that.”

He shoved past her. Scarlett didn’t turn around. She heard him unzip the tent door and walk outside. Then she heard him stop.

“The reason I wanted the name of the man Don Xi hired to kill me,” he said over his shoulder, tersely, “was so I could turn him over to the police.”

He started walking again.

Scarlett frowned. As soon as she’d overheard Sal tell Danny he wanted Don Xi in a talking mood, half a dozen images of cruel interrogation techniques had popped into her head. Now she was suddenly unsure. Had she misunderstood? What Sal said made sense. It was simple and logical. In fact, it was so simple and logical she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it herself.

“Wait,” she said, turning.

Sal stopped, faced her. The sun was low in the sky, silhouetting him against a furnace-orange background.

“What about Don Xi?” she pressed. “What’s Danny going to do with him now that he has the name of the man he wants?”

“Let him get some sleep? How am I supposed to know?”

“Don Xi’s at his home?”

“Sure. Danny went to his house. Where did you think he was?”

Scarlett didn’t know. Hanging upside down by his feet from the top of a building? God, she didn’t know anything anymore. She felt suddenly exhausted. “Danny was smacking Don Xi around in front of his family?”

“He’s seventy-six. He lives alone.”

The last of her anger and suspicion seeped away.

“Anyway,” Sal went on, his tone business-neutral, “I’m going to get a drink. Dinner will be soon. Join me, if you’d like.”

Scarlett stared after him as he made his way through the lengthening shadows to the mess tent. Never in her life had she been so happy to be wrong. Sal was Sal. Not the leader of some two-man vigilante squad, dishing out vengeance where he saw fit. Of course he wasn’t.

What had she been thinking?

She shook her head. Sal had been right. She was using the past to explain the present, which wasn’t entirely fair. He’d screwed up—big time—but he’d apologized sincerely both in private to her and publicly in front of the media. He wanted a fresh start. After a lot of soul searching, she’d decided she did also. To continue holding the affair over his head was wrong. She needed to commit to him one hundred percent or not at all, and she needed to decide that very soon.

With these thoughts in her head, she followed him through the dying light.

The mess tent glowed from within with warm candlelight, while outside the six-foot-tall tiki torches burned orange and jittery flames. The sun had set fully and the stars had come out, twinkling like a spill of diamonds on black velvet. The air smelled raw and primeval and invigorating. Classical music played from a stereo system somewhere, what sounded like a Bach sonata in F sharp minor. It was welcoming and relaxing. Exactly what Scarlett wanted to hear right then.

Sal was standing beneath the overhanging branches of a large tree. With a glass of Scotch in one hand and a cigar in the other, he looked cool and in control. Like a man who didn’t allow anything to faze him. Not even a wife who accused him of torture and murder.

God, she was a fool.

Cooper was working the smoking barbeque. His long white apron read: “Don’t Mess with the Chef!” When he told Scarlett and Sal to take a seat at the table, she impulsively suggested they eat together. It was Christmas day, after all. Cooper said that was a grand idea and added another folding table and two stacking chairs to the dining setup. Kit dished out huge servings of spicy braised chicken, yogurt, and couscous. He opened a five-year-old Chardonnay and, at Scarlett’s request, a bottle of local Kinyagi gin.

In his swashbuckling way Cooper led the conversation, recounting his adventures abroad, from the deserts of Australia and Asia to a two-month stint on the barren ice shelves of Antarctica. When he was halfway through a story that had him climbing a frozen waterfall in Switzerland, Sal excused himself to use the bathroom. Scarlett noticed Cooper watching him leave.