Cold Snap (38 page)

Ari had last heard of him during the
mid-nineties, when he ratted on someone who had influence in the
Republican Palace. Iraq had been (and still was) a
'it's-all-who-you-know' type of place, and Samad quickly learned it
was time to haul ass for parts unknown, which was what America
amounted to. He was later spotted hanging around with the Chaldean
Mafia in Detroit, and the SSO decided to leave him be. After all,
those thugs were doing more harm to the enemy's infrastructure than
Saddam ever did.

And then, of course, there was the unseen
cameraman whose shadow betrayed a long, oddly gentle swoop of the
arm that sanctioned burning a man to death.

Or was that his imagination?

It was too late to visit Lawson. Ari drove
home, donned his jogging togs and set out on his usual route across
Westover Hills Boulevard and down Forest Hill Avenue. When he
glanced at the river, he could make out, here and there, stretches
of the mountain bike trail Grainger's jogging club had used the day
before. It was not his fondest memory, but at least today he was
not hung-over.

His destination was the very boat landing
where he had been ambushed and nearly killed. When he arrived
thirty minutes later he glanced around for any lingering evidence
of what had taken place. But the mucosal rawness of the parking lot
had absorbed signs of the fight, while the cats had carried off the
bits of the assassin unintentionally strewn across the gravel.

The cats.

Ari took out a plastic bag filled with cat
chow and sauntered over to the jumble of broken concrete at the
edge of the lot. A colony of long standing, the occupants knew
every nook and cranny and quickly slid out of sight at Ari's
approach. But they were accustomed to the occasional Samaritan and
reemerged at his call, coming forward cautiously as he began to
distribute food.

"You're man-eaters now, my little friends,"
he cooed. "I know this isn't as good as raw human meat, but until
the next assassin comes along, it will have to do."

Having been an assassin himself, Ari
immediately reconsidered his words. He saw a large gray cat at the
top of the heap.

"Hector! Come, mighty Hector! I know how
courageous you are!"

But having been used by Ari as a wounding
projectile on a previous visit, Hector prudently maintained his
distance.

"Does anyone here need a home?" he announced
to the feline assemblage. Some of the cats actually looked up, as
though taking heed. "Not a palace, or even a chateau, but with food
and heat. You must be freezing your furry nuts off out here! Like
me, you are outcasts, adrift in an uncertain and unfriendly world.
I know I look as but a lowly Arab...but much of me is Assyrian.
What was that? I don't look it? That is what chance has dictated
for me. But I am still a handsome devil, don't you think? I am told
I look much like the late President Nasser, who could have been a
matinee idol. Perhaps he would have done better in Hollywood. Are
there any philosophers here? Anyone reborn from The Brethren of
Sincerity? You were very esoteric and mysterious. I, too, am
esoteric and mysterious. We could hold long dialogues on my gazebo.
Won't one of you come to my nice, warm, philosophical home?" He
took a step forward and the cats scattered.

"Idiots!" he shouted.

A white Sprinter moved slowly into the
parking lot, the driver's wide eyes peering cautiously in every
direction. And with reason. The last time Abu Jasim had come here
he had found Ari on the verge of death and been compelled to blow
out the chest of an American citizen. The American citizen had
deserved it, but that had not made the chore any less onerous.

There was still some light from the lowering
sun, though not enough to suit Ari's indispensable right-hand man
in North America. It would have been imprudent, unwise, unnecessary
and stupid to bring Abu Jasim to his house on Beach Court Lane.
This place held evil memories, but Abu Jasim was familiar with
Manchester Docks and there had been no time to arrange a different
rendezvous.

Ari trotted over and greeted his friend as he
lowered the window.

"Your new van is all scratched and dented,"
Ari observed.

"Thanks to you and your stupid adventure in
the woods," Abu Jasim scowled. "I have been so busy trying to find
new digs that I haven't had a chance to go to the body shop."

"You mean you haven't found a body shop to
suit your cheapness. Is your idiot nephew with you?"

"Stop calling me that!" Ahmad protested,
raising himself in the passenger seat and pulling out his
earplugs.

"Alas, I have learned all nephews are
idiots," Ari shrugged. "It is written."

"Ha!" Ahmad jammed his buds back into his
ears.

"Do you know where I found this idiot?" Abu
Jasim complained. "In an 'oxygen bar'! Have you ever heard of such
a thing?"

"I don't understand," said Ari.

"It's a place where they all sit around a bar
with hoses on their faces and snort pure oxygen!" Abu Jasim
shivered. "That place gave me the willies."

Ari stared at Ahmad. "Is this true?"

Ahmad's hearing was impeded. Abu Jasim
roughly yanked the earbuds out.

"Hey!" he shouted.

"Tell the colonel about that gas bar."

"It's not gas!"

"I'm no scientist, but I know oxygen is a
gas!" Abu Jasim glanced at Ari for confirmation. Ari nodded.

"It's nothing!" Ahmad protested. "You see
football players with oxygen masks on all the time!"

"Football!" Ari snorted. "Where all the women
dance naked! And besides, you are no athlete. You're a stick."

"Listen, all you do is strap on a nasal
cannula, like in a hospital, and inhale. It's perfectly natural.
Well, maybe the flavoring is artificial—"

"How can you flavor oxygen?"

"Aw, cm'on. Vanilla, strawberry,
chocolate—nothing abnormal."

"It's disgusting!" Ari threw up his hand.
"Why don't you smoke marijuana hay or shoot up heroin? You want a
cigarette?" Ari reached for his pack. Even in jogging togs, he
never left home without one.

"Aw, talk about disgusting!" Ahmad
winced.

"Americans don't have enough oxygen." Abu
Jasim shook his head in wonder. "They have to go to speakeasies to
get it!"

"And they harvest their shit from cans," Ari
added.

"What's in the knapsack?" Abu Jasim called to
the back as Ari opened the van's sliding panel and stepped
inside.

"The reason we need your nephew. An enigmatic
laptop."

Ahmad had begun to cram his earbuds back in,
but he whipped them out when he heard the magic word. "Laptop?"

"Be delighted, young idiot nephew. It might
contain nude images to delight and amaze you."

"You don't know what's on it?" said
Ahmad.

"It's password protected. Is there a way to
bypass such an infernal conception?"

"Only a million."

"Ah." Ari beamed at Abu Jasim. "We have
selected the right idiot."

"But for you, zero." The earbuds resumed
their position in Ahmad's lobes.

"He'll help, or I'll tell his father what a
useless dick he is."

"He already thinks that," Ahmad groused,
hearing them over the music.

"Where to?" Abu Jasim asked Ari.

"A little motel on Southside," said Ari.

"Not that same dump we were in before," Abu
Jasim objected, turning the van around in the lot and forcing a
knot of cats to scatter. "Filthy beasts."

"And not very intelligent," said Ari. "No, we
are going to a motel that has...Wi-fi? Is that how you say it?"

"Mmmm," said Ahmad.

Ari directed Abu Jasim onto Jefferson Davis
Highway, and once again Abu Jasim found himself on the long, flat
stretch of independent, non-franchise shops and motels, a land
forgotten by the usual business models. It was, in fact, very
similar to the outskirts of the typical Iraqi city or township,
power lines hanging dangerously low, buildings squat and
unobtrusive, the occasional hand-written notice of the
entrepreneurial spirit. The next best thing to being home.

The motel was near the beltway intersection.
While Abu Jasim and Ahmad stretched out the kinks from their long
trip, Ari paid for a room. When he left the office, he surveyed the
surroundings. Across the road was a flea market, closed on
weekdays. Next door was a muffler shop, closed for the night. There
was no foot traffic and lights from parking lots and businesses
were few and scattered. He took out his phone and made some calls
while Abu Jasim and Ahmad carried their overnight bags and the
laptop into the room. They were arguing about sleeping arrangements
when he went inside.

"There are only two beds, and I bet you
expect me to sleep on the floor, just like last time," Ahmad said
with the dismay and dread of the permanently oppressed.

"You can share my bed," said Ari
placidly.

"Hey, this is America!" said the boy who had
grown up in Chicago. "Men don't share beds unless they...you
know."

"I assure you, if I bugger you it will be in
my sleep. Without awareness, virtue remains intact."

Ahmad began to make shrill sounds. Ari
silenced him with a brisk wave.

"Be not afraid, idiot nephew. I won't be
staying here tonight."

"I'm driving you back home?" Abu Jasim
inquired.

"We're having guests. I'll go back to town
with one of them."

Abu Jasim shot him a wary glance, but
shrugged and said, "OK, Colonel."

Slipping the laptop out of Ari's backpack,
the relieved Ahmad occupied the bed furthest from the door.

"Good thing you brought a power cord," he
said, reaching into his overnight bag and pulling it out. "The
battery's almost dead."

"That is why I was wise enough to bring it,"
said Ari petulantly. He and Abu Jasim watched him for several
minutes. Abu Jasim yawned when Ahmad took out his own laptop and
booted up. Soon he was staring at two computer screens, oblivious
to the older men.

"You want to do something while he's dicking
around with that?" Abu Jasim said.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Go out and shoot someone?"

"Not yet. Are you hungry?"

"I could eat something." Abu Jasim looked at
his nephew. "Want us to get you something?"

Ahmad flung his fingers from one laptop
keyboard to another. He did not answer.

"Like a monkey with a banana," said Abu
Jasim. "We're going out. If someone knocks, just shoot them."

Ahmad did not respond.

They crossed the dark road to a gas station
crowded against a U-Haul rental facility. Ari complained emptily
about the cold.

"Hey, I just came down from Quebec," Abu
Jasim shot back. "Bunch of frozen peppers up there."

"'Peppers'?"

"Quebecois. That's what the English-speakers
call them. It's what they call politically insurrectionist."

"'Politically incorrect'," Ari corrected him,
pleased to be amending someone else's English for a change. "But
your language skills are improving. How is your French?"

"'Voulez-vous coucher avec mois ce soir',"
Abu Jasim sang.

Ari's alarm showed plainly as they entered
the Qwik-Stop. "I hope you don't waltz down the streets of Longueil
singing that."

"Chicks dig it," Abu Jasim said awkwardly in
50's English, then laughed.

They walked along the glass displays.
Hispanic food predominated. Abu Jasim drew out a pimento cheese
sandwich for himself and a torta for Ahmad.

"Do you have any good sandwiches here?" he
called up to the clerk.

"¿Qué?"

"¿Tiene algo bueno aquí?"

"Just what you see."

Ari settled on a pork-heavy torta.

"Has all the holiness gone out of you?" Abu
Jasim asked, looking at the

sandwich.

"You got one for Ahmad."

"But he's been in America. I expect him to be
corrupted."

"Hell is a comfortable chaise lounge
surrounded by cozy fires."

"Is it?" said Abu Jasim with lifted brow. "I
must have skipped madrasa on the day they had that lesson. Who will
our guests be? Nobody unexpected, I hope."

"You've met Ben Torson. He's the one you
delivered Uday to."

"Seems OK."

"He should be here, soon. The other
guest...you'll see."

"That doesn't sound OK."

When they entered the motel room they found
Ahmad in the same position they had left him in, but his frown had
deepened.

"Have you successfully violated the
password?" Ari asked, easing into the lone chair, a wicker
contraption that poked him in the ribs with loose strands.

"Yes and no."

"That sounds less than promising."

"Yeah," said Abu Jasim, throwing the torta at
him. "Be more upbeat."

He hefted a can of cream soda, as though
considering throwing that, too. Not wanting to damage the laptops,
he rested it next to the boy's leg.

"Hey, where's my beer?"

"We want you to keep a clear head," said Ari,
twisting the cap off a bottle of Thunderbird. The name appealed to
Ari, sounding virile and suggestive of thunderclaps. When he had
asked the clerk if it was any good, he had received a thumbs up in
reply. Abu Jasim brought a plastic cup from the bathroom. Ari
unwrapped it and poured himself a glass. He took a sip and
gagged.

"This horse has been drinking diesel fuel!"
he cried out.

Abu Jasim took the cup and sipped. "Mmmm, not
bad."

"Peasant. Take it all."

"Don't you need a clear head?" Ahmad stared
darts at his uncle.

"What is this yes and no answer I heard?"
said Ari.

"There's a zillion password hacking programs
on the Web. They're perfectly legal. Lots of companies use them.
How else can they recover data when an employee quits and walks out
without telling the boss all his passwords? I like HackPest."

Ari glanced at the screen of the laptop Ahmad
had brought with him. There were two columns. The first seemed
comprehensible enough: Session Name, Status, Input Mode, Hash
Target, Hash Type, Time and so forth. The second column gave Ari an
instant headache: oclHackPest, Cracked, Mask (followed by a series
of numbers)...under which were more numbers and abbreviations that
were completely meaningless to him—which was, he supposed, exactly
what he had expected.