Nora Jane (36 page)

“Is this relevant?”

“They don’t speak to each other. Mr. Rivers tried to prevent the marriage. The sister’s fifteen years younger. He was trustee
of her estate. If this concerns Saudi Arabians, he thinks he might also be a target. It’s just an idea.”

“This has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia. This is about Iran. It’s part of an ongoing problem. Maybe a group called Medina
or Fire From Heaven. They’re enforcers. They killed a woman writer four years ago, by mistake. Got the wrong target. They
were after the man who published Salman Rushdie in the United States and killed his girlfriend instead. We caught those bastards,
some of them, and threw their butts in a federal prison. I can’t believe we couldn’t get a death sentence. Chickenshit judges,
covering their asses. People are afraid of these guys, Lynn, and with good cause. Here’s the other thing. One of the people
on the list you found is the owner of the bookstore that the publisher and the writer they killed, this Adrien Searle, had
just been visiting. He had just had dinner with them. The bookstore owner, Freddy Harwood, is an heir to the Sears Roebuck
fortune. He had his store bombed when
Satanic Verses
was published and the death decree went down. So he’s been in this all along. He’s always been a target. This is a list of
the officers of the Independent Booksellers Association. They’ve already killed one of them, Holly Knight, the president of
the group. Well, they won’t kill the others. Okay, let’s get cracking. How can you get two or three men inside the apartment
in the quietest way?”

“Have them come to my apartment as electricians, workers, and we’ll go up the back stairs. I have a key an ex-owner gave me.
The locks haven’t been changed on the back.”

“What about the hit list?” Lynn asked. “Are you going to talk to the other two people on the list?”

“The CIA and FBI are already on it. It’s the first thing I did. You both are considered sworn to secrecy. Don’t tell this
at a cocktail party tonight.”

The FBI put four men on Freddy Harwood and even considered warning him, but decided against it. If they could catch the killers
trying to make the hit it would be better. Warning people did no good. They always tipped off the assassins. No one can act
normally when they think they’ve been targeted.

The helicopter that passed over the house at Willits and scared away the wildlife was not looking for marijuana.

* * *

Saturday, September 23, dawned clear and cold all across the American West. In Las Vegas the men who had set out to kill Freddy
were in a happier frame of mind. They had been taken by limousine to a ranch sixty miles from town and were being treated
as honored guests by a Medina sympathizer and former Olympic boxer who had retired to raise cutting horses in the desert.
Their host was an elegant, vicious man who had seen to it that everything they wanted was within their reach, including several
young blond girls who were working their way through modeling school in Vegas. Davi and Petraea took advantage of these gifts,
but Abu asked only to go riding in the desert. He woke before the sun rose and said his prayers and went to the stables where
a groom was waiting with a big, gray stallion. By the time he was in the saddle, the owner rode up to join him. The groom
ran ahead opening the gates, and they rode out into the beautiful morning.

“You are sad that it could not be on the perfect day, but Allah knows what he is doing, Abu. Your prey is waiting. It will
not be taken from you. Blessed be the name of Allah. Allah be praised.”

“What time does our plane leave this afternoon?”

“At two. We’ll get you there. When we return we will eat and then leave. I wish I could go with you. I would like to be the
one to draw the knife across his throat. This one is the Jew?”

“We hack away at the legs while the true infidel sits in splendor in London being idolized by dogs.”

“Come, let’s ride down into the arroyo. This is beautiful country, Abu. I am honored to show it to you.”

In Berkeley, Nora Jane and Freddy were putting Tammili and Lydia’s gear into the Volvo while Little Freddy sat in the car
seat complaining.

“I’m hot,” he kept saying. “Where them going to?”

“We’re going to a Girl Scout Jamboree because we are junior counselors. We help the little girls learn things they have to
know.” Tammili climbed in the backseat beside him and gave him a big kiss on the cheek. “You have to do without us for two
days.”

“You all don’t have to take us,” Lydia said. “We aren’t going very far. Why are all three of you taking us to Golden Gate
Park?”

“Because we’re going on to Willits. We’ve got our gear in the back.”

Freddy locked the front door and got into the driver’s seat and started down the driveway. “I forgot the stuff in the refrigerator,”
Nora Jane said. Freddy stopped the car and waited while she ran back into the house and got the milk and lunch she had packed.
He was so accustomed to waiting on women he didn’t even sigh. He looked out across the street and examined the neighbors’
yards. He was learning patience. If there was a heaven he was a shoo-in, he was always telling his best friend, Nieman. A
man who lives with three women is a humble man.

So he was watching as the BMW 750 came down the street going ten miles an hour and turned into the Musselmans’ driveway and
stopped. Since the Musselmans were in Europe for the fall, Freddy thought that was out of whack and picked up the phone and
called the Neighborhood Watch and reported it. He picked out the first three numbers of the license plate as he drove by a
few minutes later and called that in also. There were three men in the car. Just sitting in the driveway. Not good, Freddy
decided. Doesn’t make sense.

Information was going everywhere. The Neighborhood Watch alerted the police who told the FBI within minutes. The men in the
BMW called Abu while they were waiting for Freddy to leave his driveway.

The Harwood family drove off in the beautiful morning light. Little Freddy had figured out that Lydia and Tammili were leaving
him and he was in a bad mood about that. Lydia slipped him a handful of Teddy Grahams and that cheered him up some but not
completely. They always went off and left him. He couldn’t figure out what he was doing wrong.

“Would you make me a baby coffee?” he asked in a pitiful little voice. Baby coffee was his name for chocolate milk in a baby
bottle.

“Not now, sweetie pie,” Lydia said. “We’re going to Jamboree. Can I make baby coffee in the car? Think about it. Do you see
a refrigerator in here?”

“Momma has some. She’s got some.”

“He needs to stop drinking so much chocolate milk,” Tammili declared. “He’s getting too fat. He’s outgrown all his clothes.
We need to start giving him juices and water. He never drinks water.”

When Abu and the owner got back to the ranch, the plans had been changed. “They’re sending a plane to take you sooner,” the
owner told Abu after he read a long e-mail. “You need to get ready. The Jew has left town. They are following him. Wake the
others and tell them to get packed.”

Many things were happening in and around the house in Willits. The ground was still shifting due to the five point two that
had rocked San Francisco the week before. Because of that, the doors and windows in the house were getting out of alignment.
Not badly, just enough so it was difficult to raise and lower the screens or to lock the sliding glass doors.

In a ravine a mile from the house an
FBI
truck was setting up for business. In nearby Fort Bragg, California, two helicopters and their crews were on standby. A third
helicopter was already taking reconnaissance photographs.

A satellite was also filming the area.

Seven men were now in charge of Freddy’s safety. Three were watching the house at Willits and the remaining four were following
him in two vehicles. One vehicle was staying within sight of Freddy and his family. The other was three miles ahead.

* * *

Abu and Davi and Petraea were in a Ford Explorer driving behind the FBI men but they did not know that was what they were
doing. They thought they were alternately following and being followed by a group of gay men and it enraged Davi, who was
driving, to have to keep changing lanes with the Chevrolet carrying the FBI people. The
FBI
men had taken off their coats and loosened their ties in order to seem inconspicuous. Something about the closeness and quietness
of the men drove Davi to decide they were gay. He was still in a heightened sexual state due to his days on the ranch. He
had also caught a sexually transmitted disease but he wouldn’t know that for several weeks. “I can’t stand to see them,” he
told Petraea. “This country is so foul. All foul things are here and nothing is done to stop them.”

“How long have you been here now?” Petraea asked.

“Fifteen years. Only twice did I go home and see my family. Allah is great. He has given me this to do in his service. I do
not complain about my exile.”

“Do not look at them,” Abu said from the backseat. “It looks suspicious to stare at other motorists. The police will stop
us thinking we are in road rage. And don’t break the speed limit. There are weapons with us now.”

Davi slowed down and let the FBI get ahead. “But they will get ahead and we can’t find them.”

“Sensors are on the car. I can pick them up. Besides, we know where they are going. The man has a shack up in the hills where
he goes sometimes on weekends. We are sure that’s their destination. We have a man up there watching for us.”

The fourth Iranian was parked at a small filling station and grocery store at the turn-off from the highway up into the sandy
dirt roads that led to Freddy’s house. He had already been waiting long enough to read three newspapers and begin on a magazine.
He had told the store owner he had to wait until his engine cooled down. But this was taking too long. He read two articles
in the magazine, went in and thanked the owner and bought some potato chips and went back to his car and began to drive slowly
up the dirt road. When he was half a mile from the
FBI truck he pulled the car behind a large outcrop and turned off the motor and went to sleep. He set an alarm on his watch
for twenty minutes. He was very tired. He had not slept the night before. It was difficult work and he did not like not knowing
what it was about.

Freddy speeded up to seventy and reached across and patted Nora Jane on the knee. Little Freddy was asleep in the backseat.
They were on a two-lane highway that Freddy loved to drive. It had curves and wonderful cuts through the mountains and you
could see the history of the land laid bare. He knew it bored Nora Jane to be lectured on geology so he spared her that and
told the story to himself. When it was my best friend, Nieman, and myself, we could stop and look at rocks, he thought, but
those days are gone. We are married men with lives. He sighed, remembering the year when they built the house, driving up
from Berkeley on the weekends in a pickup truck, sleeping in a tent, building fires, seeing stars, studying rocks.

The FBI men had dropped way back. The helicopter had them now and the point man was in place. They could take their time.

In the Explorer Abu was going over their plans. “I want to make sure of the destination,” he said. “Although it could be no
place else now that he’s on this road. He’s a creature of habit. Then we will circle around on a connecting road that leads
to the house. Then we wait until dark. We go in after midnight and take him without hurting the others. All communication
lines will be cut and the car disabled. We leave him in the meadow below the house and walk back to the car and drive to an
airport near Fort Bragg. A plane is there already on the ground, waiting. It will take us to catch the planes to Wisconsin.”

“Allah calls for blood,” Davi muttered. “Allah is thirsty for the blood of infidels.”

“Don’t preach, Davi,” Abu answered. “We have not become Baptists yet. You should not watch those preachers on television so
much or listen to them on the radio stations. I have been meaning to talk to you about that. You must keep your mind clean
to do your work. Also, it is bad for your English and makes you say strange things. It is not good to call attention to yourself.
They do not like us here.”

Freddy turned onto the gravel and dirt road that led to his house. The bumping woke Little Freddy and Nora Jane gave him his
bottle of baby coffee to get him back to sleep.

When they arrived at the house, they began to unpack the car. The helicopter had its camera trained on them and missed the
two minutes it took Davi, Petraea, and Abu to get out of their car and start on foot down into a dry riverbed and begin to
walk the back way to Freddy’s house. There was still foliage on the trees near the dry river. It had been a wet summer and
the river had been full for months. The trees had had a banner year. Now they waved their leaves above the assassins and hid
them from every camera.

“We’ve lost the ragheads,” the FBI agent in charge yelled. “Speed it up. They’re gone. The goddamn sand niggers have fucking
disappeared. Let’s go. Let’s get to the house.”

By the time Freddy and Nora Jane had unpacked the car and opened the house and turned on the solar fans and started running
water to clear the pipes there were men hidden all around them. Abu, Davi, and Petraea were in a stand of Douglas fir and
madrone trees below the house. They were only thirty feet from the mountain lion’s den but they did not know that. The lion
had been gone all day foraging near the falls to the west of the riverbed.

The FBI men were out of their car and spread out in a fan along the front of the house. The FBI helicopter was frantically
trying to find the men it had lost but was only coming up with the man asleep in his car.

The satellite picked up the lion and got some really good footage of him crossing a sump below the falls, heading for home.

Little Freddy was playing on the back stairs while Freddy watched. Nora Jane was putting groceries away and wondering how
the girls were getting along at the science museum.