Blood Wine (29 page)

“I really would appreciate an explanation of your relationship,” Morgan began.

“You would?” said Elke.

“Yes.”

“Ho, ho,” said the professor. “I am an old man. We do not have a relationship.”

“I think you know what I mean.”

“What do you mean?” said Elke.

“A wise old Muslim, a beautiful Israeli, it is not the most likely combination.”

“This is a very cosmopolitan university,” said the professor with a glint in his eye.

“Okay,” said Morgan. “Let's try — an agent from Mossad and a militant mullah.”

“A-ha,” said the old man. “Such assumptions! I am merely a professor of mid-eastern cultural studies. Hardly a militant.”

Morgan looked around and thought how wonderful it must be to sit in these gloomy and exhilarating chambers day after day, surrounded by books and carpets, with inquiring minds dropping in for conversation and a glass or two of port or Madeira. It would be easy to forget the world of conspiracies and oppression.

“Perhaps you are what you seem,” said Morgan. “Certainly all this is a long way from the mayhem that travels with your protégé, here, like a constant companion.”

“The mayhem that led you here,” said Elke. “Sit down, please, and let us talk. It is important.”

“Yes, Mr. Morgan. You are an essential part of the story,” said Professor Sayyed.

“The story?” Morgan sat down.

“You have been drawn into a complex tale,” the professor continued. “In this tale there are an infinite number of stories. Do not expect a resolution or closure. This
tale will outlive us all. Perhaps we should both listen.”

“Morgan,” said Elke, “the money from the drugs was being distributed throughout North America to bankroll terrorism.” Her face was in shadow but she leaned into the light. “There is an infection of religious fanatics that is spreading throughout the world.”

“They operate under the banner of Islam,” said the old man, also leaning forward. “It is not the Islam I know, it is not the Islam of my ancestors, but they proclaim themselves Muslims.”

“When the Tri-State drug lords and the Ontario mob learned what the money was for,” said Elke, “they declared themselves an enemy of the cause. Good business, perhaps. They cannot thrive without a stable society. But something more, call it patriotism, call it the primal need to survive, something else brought them on side.”

“You told them?” said Morgan. “They didn't know their suppliers were terrorists until you let them know?”

“My job was to infiltrate through the wine operation. They had to believe they were discovering the truth by themselves. We had to work on assumptions about honour.”

“Business and honour are not incompatible,” said Professor Sayyed. “Patriotism is good business even when the business itself is corrupt.”

“We were right,” Elke continued. “Your Vittorio Ciccone, however, his arrest was a complication. We would have preferred to have him in a position of power to bring them down.”

“The terrorists, is this the bunch that calls itself al-Qaeda?”

“Yes,” said Elke. “Among other things. Think of an insidious contagion. There is no single leader, it is not a finite organism, it is a virus. We can only fight on a contact basis.”

“And Bonnydoon Winery was one such contact.”

“Exactly.”

“Then what are we doing here?” he demanded. “The three of us — is the professor one of yours?”

“Professor Ali Rashid Izzadine Al Sayyed is not with Mossad, if that is what you are thinking.” All three of them laughed at the incongruity.

“Let me explain,” said the old man. “I am, you might say, a magnetic pole in the distribution of forces at work for the eventual sovereignty of a free Kurdistan. Is that too lofty a way to say it, Mr. Morgan? I am not a leader in the political sense and I am not a mullah, although I take it as a compliment to be thought so. I am here, and it seems Kurdish nationalism in some modest way draws from me directions and force. Whether we will be successful, we shall see.”

“But your sympathies as a Muslim, are they with al-Qaeda? How the hell does Mossad fit in? Isn't Israel your enemy?”

“Israel is the enemy of Palestine, yes. And I am for an independent Palestine, of course. As a Kurd, I am opposed to the regimes in Iraq and Iran and Turkey, although they are Muslim and I am a Muslim. There are many sides. You think we are strange allies, an old man and a girl, a Jew and a Kurd. The university is a wonderful place, Mr. Morgan. In the ivory tower, we were mentor and protégé. It was simple. We provided each other a cover of academic privilege.”

“Were you with Mossad as a student?” Morgan demanded of Elke.

“Yes, of course. Think of me as a scholarship student supported by my people. Professor Sayyed knew that when I came to him.”

“We explored our common causes. The Jews are scholars as well as warriors,” said the old man. “They want to understand. And Muslims, we have a scholarly tradition. We need to understand as well. Intelligence and the university environment are not inimical, Mr. Morgan.” He paused, then added a satisfied, “Ho ho.”

“And why me, why am I here in the middle of this?”

“There is not a contest between opposing forces, Mr. Morgan. We are all caught up in the machinery of the universe.” He smiled beneficently, forgiving himself the cliché. “Think of a Rubik's cube. Each time one facet is adjusted to a common colour, the coherence of the others breaks down, until you solve the puzzle and then it is just planes of colours, not very interesting at all. But, but, but, we are not on the outside of the cube, we are on the inside. Think of that. Inside the Rubik's cube there are tensions and alliances constantly shifting as the facets on the outside are moved about. We are on the inside. Tensions and alliances, Mr. Morgan, tensions and alliances.…”

“And I am here because?”

“The enemy of my friend is not necessarily my enemy.”

“You mean Israel?” Morgan paused to consider the implications of the old man's assertion.

“And the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend,” said Professor Sayyed.

“Al-Qaeda!” said Morgan. “And the moral of the story: Do not place your faith in aphorisms.”

“Ho ho, Mr. Morgan,” said Professor Sayyed. “You understand, very good.”

“You are here,” said Elke, turning to Morgan, “because I want you here, because we need you here. We need you to understand.”

“What, exactly? What you've told me? What difference does it make whether I understand or not?”

“We need you to understand your role in all this.”

“Go on.” Morgan admired these strange allies, gathered here in academic chambers with their fingers on the pulse of the world.

“You and Miranda, we needed to use you to bring down the al-Qaeda operation in Canada. Vittorio Ciccone, he was our instrument, but he was compromised. In the States, the Sebastiani family declared war on the terrorists. It is a war they could not win, no more than you can win a war against drugs. You cannot fight a virus with swords — or with guns.”

“But they're out of business.”

“Temporarily, yes. They'll steer clear of the Mafia now. We have slowed the contagion but by no means conquered it. They will shift alliances, perhaps consolidate, mutate into more virulent strains. And then they will strike, and they will strike again and again until they have dissipated their strength or destroyed the world.”

“That is not rhetoric,” said Professor Sayyed. “They do not have to blow us up to bring us to ruin. They can force us to change our laws, shift our values, compromise our most fundamental beliefs, and we will destroy ourselves, Christians and Jews and Muslims alike. If we are not careful, we will become the cause of our own destruction — the inoculation will be worse than the illness.”

“And in Canada,” said Morgan, “you think the terrorists still have the upper hand?”

“Until the man known as Mr. Savage is terminated,” said Professor Sayyed.

“And that is where I come in,” said Morgan.

“Yes,” said Elke. “Savage must be quietly eliminated.”

“Quietly?”

“We cannot risk a trial,” said Elke. “It would send the terrorists into deep cover. We would lose too much, trying to flush them out and hunt them down. And the Mafia, they cannot be compromised.”

“You must be joking,” Morgan exclaimed. “Why not? They do more damage than all the terrorists in the world.”

“Mr. Morgan,” said Professor Sayyed, “we are not here to have a discussion about moral relativity. Terrorists strike at the foundations of civilization. Gangsters, they eat away at the edges. The difference, perhaps, between skin cancer and a tumour in the vitals; both virulent, but one is on the surface and the other buried deep within.”

“I make no promises,” said Morgan.

“Of course not,” said Professor Sayyed. “It is important for you to know what is at stake. I am sure you want this Mr. Savage brought to justice one way or another. It is a terrible thing that he did to your partner.”

“You know about that.”

“Are you surprised?”

“Nothing surprises me at this point.”

“Do you see, Morgan?” said Elke. “Israeli security and the dream of a Kurdish homeland, these are not so far apart. The professor and myself have causes in common and, of course, profound differences. But these terrorists, they will destroy any possibility of an independent Kurdistan, just as they will reinforce the Hezbollah extremists.”

“You leave yourselves open.”

“To argument, yes. To terrorist atrocities, yes. And you will be as vulnerable as we are, perhaps more so, because you will not be prepared.”

“By you, you mean us?”

“Exactly, Canadians, Americans, who live beyond the fear of attack or the logic of dreams. You think I don't know all the arguments: how can we be in favour of a homeland for the Kurds but not for the Palestinians? Israel brutalizes the Palestinians, the Kurds must be subservient to the Islamic authority of Baghdad, Tehran, Ankara. Fine, let us argue — but not be awash in the blood of the innocent.”

“Elke, are you an agent for Mossad, an apologist for Israel, or a champion for the Kurds against fundamentalist oppression?”

“These are not mutually exclusive,” the old professor interjected. “Rubik's cube, Mr. Morgan. If we could see all the tensions and alliances inside, the puzzle would lie in pieces, each facet a meaningless fragment.”

“A final question?” said Morgan.

“Shoot,” said Elke.

Morgan looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Why Miranda and I, why not you, Elke? This is your line of work.”

“Al-Qaeda knows me. When they picked me up in Rochester, it was the end of the line. Carlo Sebastiani asked me to go there as a mediator with the terrorists, to let them know it was over, to broker a peace settlement. Their response was pretty much what I've told you. They figured out I wasn't there as a wine expert. I met with a cell in Rochester and we drove to the distribution centre in Buffalo. Their people were not happy so they took me to Canada to allow Savage to resolve the problem. No problem. Kill me. Unfortunately for Gianni, it didn't happen that way.”

“Why us?”

“You were already on the inside. Miranda was involved in Ciccone's trial and she was sleeping with one of theirs — Philip Carter, really an Albanian Muslim extremist by the name of Mohammet Jousef. She was a perfect connection between terrorists and gangsters. She was already in position, and you were a bonus.”

“So you were faking it when you turned up at her place?”

“Faking it? No, I was distressed. But yes, I was in control.”

“You peed on her floor!”

“What?”

“On purpose, you peed your pants.”

“Yes, I did.”

Morgan gazed at her in amazement.

She smiled.

Professor Ali Rashid Izzadine Al Sayyed busied himself adjusting the corner of a carpet with his foot.

Miranda glanced out her bedroom window as she was getting dressed. The trees had grown since she was a child but she could still glimpse the river behind the houses across the road. Looking down toward The General Store, the name
Millers
displaced by a definite article, she caught sight of a car parked just at the edge of her line of vision. Ominously, it was not in front of a house.

As she finished putting on her clothes, she called out to Frankie walking by in the hall to the bathroom.

“We've got company.”

“No!” Frankie exclaimed and strode into Miranda's room. “Where? Who? Damn it. I'll call Tony.” She strode back out the bedroom door.

The three of them gathered in the living room. The drapes were still closed. Privacy was harder to come by and of greater concern in a village than in the city. Miranda's mother had always kept the curtains drawn from dusk until mid-morning.

“I wouldn't count on them waiting until dark, not this time,” said Miranda.

“How did they know we're here?” said Tony. “If they've been there all night, why didn't they take us out in the dark?”

“Because they just arrived,” said Miranda. “They waited until office hours. They must have someone on the inside at Police Headquarters, someone who would know I owned a place here.”

“Who would know that?” asked Frankie, implying that it seemed very personal to know her family home was in Waterloo County.

“Yeah, maybe, okay, they went through my mail. I get bills for this place sent to Toronto. The bastards had better not have broken into my apartment.”

“That's the least of your problems,” said Tony.

“Yeah, right.” Miranda walked to the front window and peered through a slit in the drapes between the folds of dark velvet so old the colour was an indeterminate bluish-brown-green.