He finally replies, "I don't believe there was poison in the canister or in the soda can. But I believe it's in this room"
"And why do you believe that?" Catalyst asks.
"Because. Death is like bungee-cord jumping, even for people who are trained not to be scared of it. There's a look on the face before a person leaps—and you didn't have it when you just drank or inhaled, my friend. Or I wouldn't have let you do it."
He pointed a finger toward the glass-cleaner bottle but did not touch it this time. "What's in there, Raoul? You can be a drama queen and rot in the can until the CDC figures it out, or you can tell me and save us all a lot of time."
Another long silence follows. I hear a handgun cock over my head. Hodji puts his hand out to warn the agent to be careful, while casting a glance at me and Tyler. Hodji does not want a skirmish wherein a minor could get shot, but he is also aware of things, I sense, that are slightly beyond my comprehension. "They're beyond dangerous. You have no idea what you're tangling with." Michael's words yesterday strike at my heart. USIC agents never miss. Yet I feel exposed and vulnerable somehow, and to something I know not of.
"Fine. I will be honest with you," Catalyst says, though I doubt his sincerity. "There is a very dangerous chemical agent in this house, and in fact, it is in this room."
"Don't waste my time," Hodji goes on. "Tell me where it is, or don't."
"It is under my fingernails"
I glance at his shiny nails. It is an absurd lie to annoy the agents. Still, I focus on the strange cut of those nails, into sharp points, but it is beyond my comprehension until it is too late.
Two seconds later, Catalyst is dead on the floor with at least three bullets in his head. I have been pushed around somehow, but I don't realize what Catalyst did until I see Tyler's face. He has four bloody scratches down one cheek. From the way mine burns, I am certain I've suffered the same.
I spin in amazement to look at Catalyst's pointy little nails. They are relaxed now forever, but they are pulpy with blood on his nail tips ... nails which were not manicured, but wet with something. I jerk my gaze to the bottle of glass cleaner, which Catalyst had been reaching for as the raid started, and the sponge now on the floor ... He must have wet the sponge, dug those strange nails in, and...
My asthma shuts my chest, and I drop into a dead faint with my cheek stinging.
FORTY-SIX
CORA HOLMAN
FRIDAY, MARCH IS, 2002
NOON
I TENSED, LOOKING into eyes that were getting to be very familiar. Out of nowhere, a familiar gaze could shift to something frightening, alien. I had gotten to know Jeremy Ireland rather well over these past six days and had enjoyed watching many tapes of my mother either feeding the world's poor or filming stunning violence in her attempts to stop all wars. As her cameraman, he had much to tell. But then suddenly, I would be overcome with the few memories I had of the ICU, when I first came out of my coma and thought another man was Jeremy Ireland. Then I would think, The first assassin was caught ... but is there now a second one? If this man is only pretending to be Jeremy Ireland, how would I know? Maybe he's been slowly poisoning me this week with ... what? I would totally freeze and be unable to speak.
Jeremy Ireland stood at the foot of my hospital bed and brought a VHS tape out of his pocket. "Here it is. As requested. How are you feeling today? Better than yesterday?"
"Better today, thanks..." I kept staring at him. I was still myself in the sense that guarding my words was second nature. I had not revealed to him, not once in six days of visits, that I could often forget how much I liked him and out of nowhere suspect he was an assassin. And once the suspicion overcame me, it did not go away easily.
He came up beside me, avoiding my IV lines with a respectful pause, and reached around them with the tape. Is it a bomb?
"I appreciate it," I said, and forced myself to take it. Nothing happened. Just a tape. Same as yesterday.
I had given him a key to my house, so he could get beta tapes, transfer them to VHS at the local news station, and bring them to me. But on a bad paranoid moment like this, I wondered if I had been stupid.
I tried to divert myself from my fear by reflecting on what I liked about him. Jeremy Ireland wore designer clothing and had blond shoulder-length "journalism hair," as I call it, and spoke the King's English. His father was in the House of Commons, and they owned a small castle in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, where Prince Charles has a home. I was shocked at first, trying to picture him with Aleese. It's hard if I'm remembering the Aleese I lived with for four years—or if I'm wondering if he's an assassin. But as I watched the tapes I often forgot about that Aleese, and my suspicions would melt away. We watched videos Jeremy shot or Aleese shot in war zones, and I kept being introduced to this daring, courageous pirate lady, who had an idea in her head that photography and video could cancel the concepts of war and starvation on the planet Earth.
I turned the tape over absently, and saw it was marked MOGADISHU.
"You're certain you want to see this?" he asked.
"Yes."
"It's quite brutal. Some things are better left unseen."
Perhaps it could bring a lot of painful flashbacks to him. But I defended my stance. "I watched Black Hawk Down this morning. I saw the Mogadishans jumping up and down on top of the killed American marines. I saw them strip and drag that man."
"Well, the marines are not one's mother. You already know that four journalists were stoned the day your mum was injured ... beaten with rocks until they were dead."
And my mother would have made five.
She'd been injured in several of the tapes I'd watched with Jeremy. She took shrapnel in her arms once, and got her back singed running from an explosion in an Israeli marketplace. This is the one that proved to be too much—the one that created her great metamorphosis, much like that of Gregor into the cockroach in Kafka's story.
He put the tape in the machine and hit PLAY. I had already decided I wanted to start my own journal, and I would write each day of this illness until I was better, and maybe it would be useful to someone ... somewhere, someday. Maybe if there were ever another terror attack on a small town.
But I decided upon watching this that I could never do justice to my mother getting injured. It was a torture scene that had basically taped itself from the dashboard of a Reuters car, in which she and Jeremy were escaping the same enraged mob that was stoning four journalists somewhere in the dusty background.
Jeremy had thrown the camera onto the dashboard so he could help Aleese, and most of what was filmed was chaos, but the situation came clear. Four huge, angry Somalians broke the passenger window of the car as the driver yelled helplessly. Aleese was in the passenger seat. The car was surrounded. The men pulled her out the passenger door to do god knows what—but Jeremy jumped over from the back into her seat and grabbed her left arm. You could hear the engine screech and men screech, bones being crushed under the wheels. Jeremy refused to let go. So did the four huge men. As the driver picked up speed, the men dropped off one by one, but it took a while. The worst was my mother screaming in agony. It was endless. As one man dropped off it would subside long enough for her to gulp for breath, but it would start up again.
They were mad at her for taking pictures of a bombing site where little children had been hurt—I think. Nobody made a very clear case for why they were attacking her. But after five minutes of hearing my mother yelling, "AhhhhhAHHHHHH-HahhhhhAHHH," steadily, I thought I would lose my mind.
The camera managed to bump hard once and turn to a different angle. Most of the footage had been of the top of my mother's head and on the road behind it and the back fender. The men were blurry but still terrifying, holding on to her legs, biting her in the back, biting her in the legs, clawing at her waist. And finally, the last one let go of her ankle. They didn't seem to mind getting road burn. Something big jolted the car and the camera moved to catch Jeremy's chest and a higher view of the window. He gripped m
y mother's arm still, and blood streamed from where he'd been gripping with his fingers. Her shoulder was right at the top, but where her head and body should have been was nothing. You would have thought Jeremy had hold of an arm ending at the shoulder.
He screamed, "Stop the car! She's losing her arm!" near the end.
The car banged to a halt, and the camera swerved again, showing nothing but the seat between Jeremy and the driver. The driver screamed madly, "Hurry! They're not done! They're coming back!"
And my mother's body flew into view—just the back of her. She lay with her face in the driver's lap and the rest of her on Jeremy. I could see bites and bruises and hear her voice, alive as ever: "Go! Go now! Jesus, Jeremy, don't you ever stop whining?"
As the driver stepped on the gas, the camera toppled into her and went to black.
Jeremy had been standing beside me, and he stepped quietly to the machine, hitting STOP. He didn't look at me. I could find nothing to gaze at but the floor.
"We did manage to get away," he finally said. I was surprised to hear him laugh, however sadly. "But we didn't get to a hospital for two days. We'd no idea how bad the damage was. I think your mum knew. But in her usual style, she only wanted to berate the loss of her oldest and best camera."
I sat for the longest time, just staring at the foot of the bed. I was having what Rain had termed a "four-star day," which is when you feel no symptoms at all. I didn't feel peaceful, however. The Aleese in the footage is starting to meld in my mind with the mother-monster who existed in my home for four years. The end result of her was starting to make a little sense. It's linked to something—something courageous, something that counted—despite that it had torn her to shreds.
Jeremy cleared his throat. "Your mother detested violence, for all that she sought after it. She watched this footage over and over once we got back to Beirut. I should never have let her see it."
I wanted to say, "Don't blame yourself," but my voice had left me.
"I think what really killed her," he went on, "or killed her will to live, was the situation more than the men. The Americans went to Somalia intent only on feeding the starving people. There was endless civil war there, and many dangerous men looking to, uh, become king. The warlords would steal the children's food to feed their militias."
My eyes floated up in horror. Life in Trinity Falls gave me no preparation to understand this.
"The U.S. militia decided that to feed the poor, certain warlords had to be done away with. It was a mistake. To fight wayward power with wayward power does not work out. The bombing inflated the mob, which stoned the journalists, and almost got your mum." He sucked in a breath and let it out again. "Many people thought after the Black Hawk Down business that we should not feed people in countries experiencing civil unrest. They said we should let those countries argue it out among themselves, and maybe the starvation will snap them into disciplined action. The feeling was, when we feed the poor, we end up devoured by the hands we try to feed. Feeding the poor and ending violence had been Aleese's life. I don't think Aleese could quite argue with herself as well after Mogadishu. She'd seen violence before, but none that took away her ability to photograph. She told me back in Beirut that her life was meaningless and, for all intents and purposes, over."
"I wish I had been more kind to her," I said, and shut my eyes, but tears built under my lids, and I felt Jeremy brush a tear off my cheek.
"When I said good-bye to her, just before she came home to you, she was sharp and unruly, and I don't suppose that ever got any better."
"Did she say her good-byes on September 10, 1996?" I asked.
He thought for a moment. "I don't recall the date as much as her resolve to cut herself off from me—from a past which she had convinced herself was a failure. It was September."
Jeremy was sitting now, leaning into me, patting my hair. My bad moment had passed. I didn't believe he was a terrorist. At least not now. Tomorrow might be different, but it wouldn't matter. His flight was leaving tonight.
This conversation had been hefty. It seemed to open a door for what I knew I needed to ask. It was now or never.
"Are you ... my father?"
FORTY-SEVEN
SHAHZAD HAMDANI
FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2002
NOON
I AWAKE THIS morning under heavy sedation again. I absorb the view of the Empire State Building out my window and decide I am actually in my Pakistani village, downloading photos of King Kong off the Internet for my father. He loves King Kong. I am planning a surprise for his birthday of King Kong photos. And suddenly I realize this is a fanciful dream, and I am at Beth Israel Hospital and this time not for asthma, per se, though it acts up for at least six hours a day. On a far more serious note, I have been scratched in the face by a devil. I have not spent much of my life reflecting on the devil. But now, I decide that the devil is personified in a man who will make it his last ambition on Earth to threaten the lives of two people.
Hodji had made an on-the-spot decision to fly me and Tyler here, as he says Beth Israel has the best protocols in place to counter acts of terror such as mustard or nerve gas. After my asthma visit upon arriving on American shores, I did not think I would be back so soon.
Saturday night, I found myself hoping that Hodji was overreacting and that there had been nothing under Catalyst's nails that could hurt Tyler or me. For one, the scratches stopped burning after an hour or so, despite that the scabs had swelling beneath them until yesterday. For another, there is an absurdity to what happened that protects me, prevents me from fully accepting its reality.
The sedation is not a good feeling, but not a bad feeling. The only bad feeling I have is an itching beneath the scabs of my cheek and a restlessness, due, I am certain, to computer withdrawal. I have been given nothing to do but watch the television and the view while USIC, the CDC, and the doctors here have been trying to name a germ they claim to have seen in our blood. As appears to be characteristic with ShadowStrike, it is nothing they have seen before.
I notice immediately that Tyler is not in the bed next to me where he has been for six days.
I see the arm and leg restraints have been left where he lay. His thrashing about had become worse and worse with each passing day, as it appeared his mother was not coming. She had been contacted by USIC and told quite frankly that her son had been scratched in the face by a suspected terrorist bearing a yet unidentified substance under his nails. I cannot say why she chooses not to visit, but "she'll steal my hard drive" and "she'll figure out what I am" were common expressions of Tyler's after he tried to fling himself out the window on the second day.
I tried to remind him repeatedly that he is an American hero and his mother ought to be proud. But for some reason, this would only soothe him for an hour at a time. It has been like sleeping next to a rabid animal, and I am hoping that perhaps while I was under a sleeping sedative, they removed him to get some help with his mind.
The room is too quiet, such that when Roger shows up, I am relieved just for some distraction. He glances at Tyler's vacant spot and does not look bothered by it, so I do not question him right off. He seems focused. He sits and leans the laptop to face me so I can see the screen. He has not mentioned my duplicity at the hospital in southern New Jersey. Perhaps he is ashamed. Dr. Briglianni has accompanied him, but at first, the things Roger shows me are not medical, and are quite engaging. He waits as, slowly, a black-and-white photo of a laughing man forms on the screen.
"Omar," he says.
I stare, hypnotized by the picture of a nondescript man of perhaps fifty, with dark curly hair and a clipped beard and mustache. The photo was obviously taken when Omar was not concerned about hiding himself. I see a marketplace in the background that looks highly cultured but perhaps not American. The buildings are older, yet familiar to me.
"Germany?" I guess. "Taken in Hamburg while he was professor over there?"
Roger grins into his lap and lets out a breath that sounds like r
elief. "Don't lose your mind because of all this, Shahzad. It's a good mind. It's fantastic. It's a computer chip wrapped up in a big heart."
Whatever, as the American kids love to say. To recognize German buildings is for me no more difficult than to remember languages that I see and hear.
"Omar Loggi," he tells me. "Professor of biochemical engineering, University of Hamburg. He was an associate professor for two years—not to blame the Germans too much on this one. It's not like they could have possibly known him. Before that, he was Gustav Mojobian of Romania, and before that, who knows ... A national is sometimes a person who has become devoid of a homeland, devoid of family, devoid of alliances with his people. That's one good way that you can tell a terrorist. Did you know that, Shahzad?"
I still have the droopiness from the sleep sedative, and I do not interrupt him.
"A terrorist is a person who holds principles above people. That's the first trait. If you can trace them back far enough, you often see them divorcing themselves from any people with whom most people are normally close—family, friends, neighbors, communities. People who can prey on the world's innocents are not attached to people. They have replaced people with principles. Principles become their best friends. It sounds very high and mighty. However, we live in a world still too influenced by intelligence over instinct. Thank you, the Enlightenment. But terroristic behavior is not high and mighty. It's sad, and sad is simple."
His speech makes me mindful of my father talking about coming to New York. I had told him often, in anger and frustration, that I did not want to stay alone and help Uncle Ahmer and that I wanted him to remain in Pakistan as always. And I reminded him that what he wanted to do in America could easily be done without being there in person.
"But Shahzad, if the Americans are to trust me, they will want often to shake my hand and sit in meetings where they can see me, hear me, smell me, and look into my eyes. It's always primarily about the people, Shahzad, about the relationships."