Cold Snap (23 page)

"Jahech," Ari smiled. He snagged Fred as he
came by.

"Deputy Fred! You shouldn't be doing this so
soon after being shot. Is your wound—"

"Perfectly healed," Fred grimaced as he
huffed a settee through the door.

They worked quickly, unloading the heavy
pieces and shuffling them like pros. Which did not prevent Ari from
crooning over his new acquisitions and harrowing the laborers with
death threats whenever they thudded (ever so gently) against walls
or doorsills.

"You wouldn't really cut off my testicles and
stuff them into my mouth, would you?"

"Would I say such a thing?"

"You just did. And in case you didn't notice,
I wasn't born with testicles."

"I'm grief-stricken."

They were halfway through when they proved
their furniture-moving bona fides were incomplete.

"The carpets!" Karen shrieked.

The cheerful chatter that had accompanied
their labors up to that point subsided into grim embarrassment when
they realized they had forgotten something so fundamental. They had
been goofing off, in effect, and a reshuffling of bulky furniture
so they could lay down the carpets was their punishment. They
flinched under Ari's gaze, as though their error had transformed
him into a real customer instead of a bogus client. As if lost time
really mattered.

Gratified by their sheepishness, Ari toned
down his churlish directives to small, firm requests.

"That goes over there. Thank you. Please move
the couch a little to the left. Thank you. The dinner table needs
to be centered. Thank you. Would you allow me to make coffee for
all of you?"

"Sure," said one of the workers.

And then Ari remembered he only had two cups,
apologized for his unfulfillable offer, and became nearly as quiet
as everyone else—who at least grunted with effort. He overheard one
deputy comment on the fact that there was no bedroom or basement
furniture. They were saved the chore of dragging heavy furniture up
or down the stairs. This put him off the idea of getting a
king-size bed.

"I will have you all over for dinner," he
asserted as they neared completion.

Karen drew up. "You're cooking?"

"I wouldn't dare," Ari chuckled.

Karen was agreeable to sitting at the new
dining room table for some take-out.

"In fact, I have great hopes of hiring a real
chef for a special meal."

"We'll need to get clearance for that," Karen
frowned. "We can't have any old Tom, Dick or Jane waltzing in here.
Why do you think we're doing all this moving for you?"

"I don't think she would be agreeable to a
background check," said Ari, alarmed by the possibility that Madame
Mumford might shun him completely if confronted by investigators.
And what if they found some inaccuracy in her green card
application? She might be deported back to France!

"I really don't think that's necessary," he
protested. "I've already had visitors."

"Two cops...that was bad enough. But I heard
there was a girl in here, a little girl..."

"A neighbor looking for her cat."

"And who else? I can't count on you being
truthful, you understand."

"Me?" exclaimed Ari, thinking he had also had
a killer in his house: Detective Louis B. Carrington. He wouldn't
be coming back.

"Just check, first, would you? We're not
going to torture any confessions out of him or her. Just talk."

Which would amount to the same thing, Ari
believed, already dismissing Karen's admonishment from his
mind.

As the rooms filled up, the hollow aches of
the house were suppressed under the carpets and new furniture. The
echoes that had first greeted Ari receded to a sense of hopeful
occupancy. He caught Karen's ear.

"Should I tip your workers?" When she did not
answer, he reached into his pocket.

"Jesus, Ari! Don't bring out your flash roll.
We're on the clock here. We're getting paid."

Ari, never averse to keeping his money, left
the roll in his pocket.

"Why did you ask me who else had access to
your tracker?" she whispered. There had already been enough mishaps
in this assignment to ruin her career. It sounded to her as though
this was something that needed to be nipped in the bud.

Ari thought a moment.

"Would ISAF have—"

"Why are you asking? What happened?"

Ari filtered through what he knew of Karen
and settled upon her reaction on hearing that the late Mustafa
Zewail had received letters filled with racial epithets. 'Hate
mail' Karen had called it.

"I received a phone call from someone
unknown."

"But no one knows your number!" said Karen,
absorbing a sharp breath. "What did they say?"

"He called me a bad name."

"Like what?"

Ari covered his eyes. "It's too horrible to
repeat."

"Bullshit," said Karen, raising a fist.

Lowering his hand, Ari shrugged. "He called
me a nigger."

"No shit."

"Indeed."

"But you aren't...I mean...well, some low
types might consider..."

"It was too much to bear. I broke my
phone."

"We'll get you a new one," Karen asserted.
"Something...more useful."

Something bugged, Ari thought, capable of
instantly tracking outside calls.

"That would be most kind," said Ari, who had
about fifty cell phones hidden away upstairs.

"What else did they say?"

"That they would torture and kill me." Ari
mused for a moment. "And that they would visit rapine upon my
body."

Karen formed a skeptical moue. "There might
be an ounce of truth in that ton of bullshit."

"That is an interesting formulation…but I
disgrace."

"You 'digress', Ari. You've been handing out
your phone number to strangers, haven't you?" The bottom of Karen's
eyelids seemed to turn up, an odd illusion that made it seem she
was wearing mascara—which she never did. Not to Ari's knowledge.
She had learned to trust Ari's silences more than his heavily
vocalized excuses, and took his non-response as a verifiable 'yes'.
"OK, you tell me what you were doing at Beacon Corner Salvage and
I'll tell you what I know about ISAF."

"I was watching computers being destroyed,"
said Ari. "What do you know about ISAF?"

"Nothing." She held up an envelope. "Here,
this came through your mail slot. I picked it up before we laid the
carpet."

Ari took the envelope. It was addressed:
Occupant.

"How did they know I was here?" he asked,
staring at the return address, which belonged to a cable
company.

"Our traditional reaction is to toss that
kind of garbage in the garbage, unopened. I'm going. We've sweated
enough for one day. Oh, and..." She took out an encrypted thumb
drive and laid it on the kitchen counter. "Do some work, for a
change."

Another load of gory images from Iraq. Ari
looked at it sourly.

Ari saw no call for door-slamming, but that
was what Karen did as she exited through the garage. Was she angry
at Ari for planting suspicions in her mind? She already harbored
doubts about ISAF's interference in domestic affairs.

He opened the junk mail. It wasn't junk mail.
Not entirely. He read:

"An offer you won't see anywhere else! More
HD and On Demand Services, Ultra-fast Internet. Don't miss our
Triple Play!"

This actually interested Ari. Should he
invest in cable? He'd better get a television, first.

He was also interested in the personalized
scrawl at the bottom of the flyer:

"Hey, Diddlewit. If you know what's good for
you, you'll take the next flight back to the desert. Want to learn
more? Meet me at Harrowgate Park at 7."

Ari looked at his watch.

CHAPTER TWELVE

First Battle of Fallujah

When Ghaith strode to the head of the
classroom, the teacher took one look in his eyes and backed
away.

"Be seated against the wall."

The teacher opened his mouth, a ferocious
anathema forming on hollow air. Ghaith cocked his head forward ever
so slightly and the hot air dribbled into silence. The teacher had
so often told himself and his students that death was nothing to
fear in a good cause that he had come to believe it. But Ghaith's
expression clearly indicated that death was a prize he only
reluctantly awarded after a long and horrifying expiration. The
teacher sat against the wall.

Ghaith turned to the boys. They had rolled up
their makeshift bedrolls after being awakened by the pre-dawn
explosions rolling in from the city's outskirts. The Americans had
blown up the berms in synchronized blasts that violently shook
every wall in Fallujah. But only a few of the boys had whimpered.
The rest stiffened with eager resolve to do their duty. Aching for
the proverbial Paradise of Virgins, Ghaith thought. And not a one
of them would know what to do with a virgin if you threw one on top
of him.

Gunfire and explosions shook the soggy
atmosphere. A rare downpour had set the boys to marveling. It must
be a sign from Allah. Earlier, a man from the Council had appeared
and ordered Ghaith to prepare his miniature army for battle. Ghaith
had sent him on his way with a calm assurance.

Hours passed. The teacher had regaled the
boys with tales of honor, of honorable deaths, of heroic
eviscerations. Ghaith bided his time. And then he heard the
telltale, exquisitely irritating whine of a drone. Standing, he
ordered the teacher away and took his place at the front of the
room. The boys gaped at him.

"Ah, the Americans," he shook his head as a
distant blast shook the walls and rained plaster. "A feeble people.
I'm going to tell you about some real he-men. Long before Iraq,
long before Muhammad, long before Persia...there were the
Assyrians."

Ghaith would not have admitted to strutting
back and forth across the room, but that was what it amounted
to.

"The Assyrians make the Americans look like
castrated peacocks. They wiped out their enemies, they boiled rebel
kings in oil, they cut off tongues, gouged eyes and trampled the
little people of the world under their feet."

The little people in front of him gaped. This
was all pre-Islam stuff, scarcely worth mentioning and severely
skimped on by the teacher. Besides, Assyrians today were much
reduced and tucked safely away, where they could harm no one.

Another blast shook the walls. Ghaith threw
up his hands in disgust.

"Americans! Bah! All noise. And you should
learn this above all: noise is meaningless. When you hear all this
booming, think of your silent prayers. Which do you think means
more?"

He glanced at the teacher, anticipating a nod
of approval. Certainly, he could not disagree with that.

The teacher was glowering at him.

From the growing growl of battle, it seemed
apparent the enemy was taking aim at the souk. Well, no wonder.
During the first occupation, before the Blackwater massacre, the
Americans had slipped agents disguised as locals into the
neighborhoods. They had soon discovered the souks were major
providers of weaponry, everything from rifles to RPG's. They had
raided the weapon shops, but these had re-stocked rapidly after the
first withdrawal.

"What does what you say have to do with the
great martyrs?"

This bit of insolence came from the dark,
intense boy who had answered the teacher's challenge regarding the
sura. He showed no fear of the manmade earthquakes beneath them. He
was either very bright or very stupid. And since Ghaith himself was
trembling inside, he hoped it was the latter. At any moment a shell
could come roaring in and turn this group of boys into collateral
corpses.

They all jumped when a chair piled carelessly
on one of the desks fell over. All but the sura boy, who kept his
eye on Ghaith.

The school room door slammed open and two
insurgents strode in, sweating, their eyes wide with
excitement.

"What is this?" one of them demanded. "Why
are these boys still here! They're needed!"

"Ah," Ghaith nodded, strolling past the boys
to the back of the room. "I was waiting because I needed to inform
the Council of an unanticipated blessing...but let me show you.
Come this way."

One of the insurgents was dressed in old worn
trousers, a T-shirt and sneakers. Ghaith thought the series of oily
streaks running down from his left shoulder must have been caused
by cosmoline residue from the mortar shells he had been carrying.
He was unarmed. The second man carried an AK-47. An ammonia-like
odor betrayed recent use. Like most of the insurgents, he had
probably been streaking across the streets, taking pot-shots at the
enemy before disappearing around the next corner. His dishdash was
grimy with dirt and plaster, as if a ceiling had dropped down
around his head—which was no doubt exactly what had happened.

"A blessing?" the man wearing a T-shirt
asked, curious, but still stoked with wrath.

"Mortar shells. Hundreds of them. This
way."

The insurgents followed Ghaith out of the
classroom. The end of the hall opened upon a broad conference room.
On one side a sheet-covered rope had been stretched from one end of
the room to the next. Ghaith strode over and pulled the sheet
aside, revealing ammunition crates stacked against the wall.

"I found this while I was wandering around
last night. Someone on the Council must have thought ahead. The
boys can run the shells straight to the battlefield. You didn't
know about this?"

Their dumbstruck looks as they inspected the
crates provided his answer. The man with the AK still wore that
expression when Ghaith slammed his fist in the back of his neck. He
fell forward onto a crate.

The mortar man reacted quickly, grabbing a
crowbar used to open the crates and leaping at Ghaith, who danced
backwards as the iron whiffled past, then jumped forward and jammed
a finger in the man's eye. His gasp of pain was cut short when
Ghaith picked up the rifle and shot him.