Pandemic (31 page)
Authors: Daniel Kalla
Like a tail wagging on a wolf, the grin struck Eleish as out of place on the feisty old cleric. "We will manage," Eleish said.
Wide-eyed, Fadi glanced at Hassan, but the Sheikh shook his head ever so slightly and then turned back to Eleish. "It is God's way." He shrugged calmly. "Are you a believer, my friend?"
"In what you preach?" Eleish asked.
"In Allah," Hassan barked, but then resumed his pleasanter tone. "And the life he commanded us to live as told to the Prophet."
"I am a Muslim," Eleish said.
"Then we are brothers," the Sheikh said confidently. "And we have nothing to fear of each other."
"I wish that were so," Eleish said. "I am just not sure which of us has more to fear."
"Clearly it is you." Hassan raised a defiant, tremulous finger. "I fear nothing but the judgment of God."
Impatient, Eleish shifted from one foot to the other. He waved the gun at the Sheikh. "Hazzir Kabaal. You know him, don't you?"
Hassan folded his skinny arms across his chest. "Why do you ask after him?"
"Do you know him?" Eleish said, raising his voice along with the barrel of the gun.
"Abu Lahab is a student of mine," Hassan said.
"Where can I find him?" Eleish asked.
"Not here."
"Where is he?" Eleish spat.
The Sheikh shrugged. "I am not his keeper."
Eleish's irritation got the better of him. "Do you have any idea what sort of crimes Kabaal is responsible for?"
Hassan grunted a bitter laugh. "Abu Lahab acts in the service of God."
"The service of God?" Eleish snorted. "The man has spread a deadly virus among innocent people. He murders women and children in the name of Islam. Do you call that the service of God?"
"Innocent?" Hassan grimaced as if pained. "There is nothing innocent about the enemies of the faithful. Open your eyes!"
"To what?" Eleish shot back. "The bilious hatred that you preach."
"I do not hate anyone," Hassan said calmly. "What I preach is the preservation of our way of life."
Eleish shook his head vehemently. "The Koran extols peace and tolerance. You and your kind... You twist the beautiful words until nothing is left but bigotry and loathing." He sighed heavily. "There are so few of you hate-mongering extremists. And so many of us peaceful Muslims. Yet your kind defines the face of Islam to the rest of the world. And what an ugly face it is."
"Mohammed said that those who are not for Islam are against it." The Sheikh shrugged unapologetically.
"So death to all the nonbelievers?" Eleish scoffed.
"I wish I could make you understand." Hassan's face assumed another sad, missing-toothed smile. "Are you too blind to see the threat?"
Eleish threw up his free hand. "What threat?"
"Ever since the Turks dispensed with the Caliphate ..." Hassan said obliquely and then sighed. "In many ways, Islam is like me. Old and weak. Incapable of protecting itself." He pointed a finger at his own chest. "But inside, it is strong and pure. Do you understand, my brother? The heart and soul of Islam is good but the body ails. And the infidels ... those Western heathens, the Americans ... are the opposite. Their body is fierce and mighty, but their soul is crippled and the heart very weak."
Eleish listened to the crafty old cleric, aware of his manipulative sermonizing but engrossed by the delivery.
"And the strongest of hearts might not be enough to save us. The Americans are camped at the gates of the Tigris and within a stone's throw of Mecca." He pointed at the wall as if Mecca were just on the other side. "The lands that practice the laws of the Shari'ah have fallen, one after the other, under the weight of the American bombs. If we do nothing to stop them, they will eradicate Islam in their lust for oil. Very soon, we will be powerless to stop them." He exhaled slowly. "Hazzir Kabaal is fighting to save Islam. He is fighting the holiest of Jihads with the only weapons available to him." His voice warbled. "And you should drop to your knees and pray to God for his success."
Eleish shook his head. "You are a deluded old man."
Fadi, who had silently watched the discussion, took an aggressive step forward, but the Sheikh stopped him with a bony hand laid on his chest. Hassan turned back to Eleish. "Listen to me, brother--"
"No." Eleish walked forward until he was three feet away from the Sheikh. "I have no more time to listen to you." He leveled the gun at the Sheikh's head. "Where is Hazzir Kabaal?"
Hassan laughed softly. "Do you honestly believe I am afraid of death?"
Eleish shook his head slowly. "No, I don't." He swung his gun over until it pointed at Fadi's head.
"What are you doing?" the Sheikh demanded shrilly.
"I will give you one last chance, and then I'm going to kill your son."
Hassan's expression creased into a fleeting cringe, long enough for Eleish to know he was right. "Fadi is not--" Hassan started to say calmly.
Eleish cut him off with a snap of his fingers. "I will kill your son on the count of three, if you do not tell me where I can find Hazzir Kabaal." Eleish shoved the muzzle against Fadi's forehead. "One ... two ..."
Hassan's eyes widened and his hands shook wildly.
"Don't tell him anything, Father!" Fadi implored. "Let me be martyred!"
Eleish shrugged. "So be it. Three." He slowly began to squeeze the trigger.
"No!" Hassan squeaked. "Somalia. He is in Somalia."
Fadi's head stayed immobile but his eyes shot over to the direction of the Sheikh. "No, Father!"
"Where in Somalia?" Eleish demanded, not releasing his finger from the trigger.
"I do not know," the Sheikh cried. "He has a camp there--a base--but I am too old to travel there."
Eleish's gaze skipped from father to son. "But you know, don't you?" Eleish said.
Fadi sneered in response.
"Do you want to see your father die?" Eleish asked.
Fadi grinned malevolently. "If it means protecting the Jihad, I would see my whole family die." He glanced at his father with an expression of sheer contempt.
The old man's face flushed with shame and his chin dropped to his chest.
Eleish knew there was nothing more he would learn from either of them.
After leaving the mosque, Achmed Eleish sat in his car and smoked five cigarettes in a row, trying to quell the tremor in his hands. For a moment, he considered continuing his solo pursuit of Kabaal all the way to Somalia, but he dismissed the idea as foolhardy.
In a cloud of smoke, Eleish weighed his next step carefully. In the end, he knew to whom he had to turn. Even though the captain of the Cairo Police detectives was only in his early sixties, the little man had seemed old to Eleish for all twenty years he had known him. Captain Riyad Wazir was a throwback. Never seen in anything but a neatly pressed uniform with spit-polished shoes, Wazir always toed the official line and his preoccupation with procedure and bureaucracy bordered on obsessive. But Eleish would have gladly trusted his life in Wazir's hands, because the captain's ethics were as meticulous as his paperwork.
Once the thump in his chest had settled, Eleish reached for his cell phone. He dialed the direct line to the captain's office, but after five rings he was transferred back to the main switchboard. Eleish glanced at his watch, which read 7:00 P.M., meaning that Wazir must have left for the day. He asked the operator to transfer him to the detectives' desk, knowing there would be at least one detective on duty.
"Cairo Police," the disinterested voice said on the other end of the line.
Eleish was dismayed to hear the voice of his least favorite colleague, Constable Qasim Ramsi. For a moment, he considered hanging up on the crooked officer. "Listen, Qasim, it's me, Eleish," he said. "Do you know the Al-Futuh Mosque?"
"Of course."
"If you send officers there you will find Sheikh Hassan and his son Fadi handcuffed to a toilet in the bathroom of the madrasa behind the mosque," Eleish said.
Ramsi whistled into Eleish's earpiece. "Holy Mohammed! Have you lost your mind? You handcuffed the Sheikh to a toilet?" His voice squeaked at the end. "You will be destroyed," he said almost jovially.
"I cannot explain over the phone," Eleish said. "The Sheikh and his son are involved in a terrorist conspiracy to destabilize the government. And more. Just make sure they are picked up!"
Eleish hung up before Ramsi had a chance to reply. Satisfied that his hands were still enough to drive, he started his car and pulled out of the spot.
He had intended to drive directly to the office, but as his home was on the way he decided to stop in to shower and change before going into headquarters to file his report. He tuned the radio to an Egyptian pop station. He tapped his steering wheel to the beat of the music as his hyper-vigilance gave way to a pleasantly contented mood.
Eleish parked in front of his twenty-seven-story apartment building. Alone, he rode the elevator to the nineteenth floor. He unlocked both deadbolts--knowing how bad property crime was in Egypt, he had insisted on the second deadbolt--and walked into his living room. He dropped his keys, phone, and gun on the kitchen countertop.
The apartment felt empty without the women, but after his visit to the Al-Futuh Mosque, he was confident that they would only be parted for a matter of days or weeks. However long it took to find Kabaal.
Abiding by his wife's strict edict not to smoke in the apartment, he slid open the sliding door and stepped outside onto his balcony in the warm Cairo dusk before lighting up another cigarette. This time he only allowed himself one smoke as he stared out on his beloved city of a thousand minarets, which was never more beautiful than at dusk.
Returning to the living room, he left the door open to circulate the air through his apartment. He walked out of the living room and into his bedroom where he sat down at the desk across from the bed. He booted up the desktop computer (an unexpectedly generous present from his daughters on his fiftieth birthday last year) and waited. Once the main screen appeared, he clicked on the icon to initiate his e-mail program. He knew how long it would take the modem to establish a connection on the overburdened server, so he rose from the desk and headed for the shower.
He enjoyed a long hot shower, trying to scrub away the memories of the conversation in the mosque and the Sheikh's assertions that Islam was at imminent risk. Such hateful fear-mongering stoked the growing flames of Islamism and drove the people who followed the Hazzir Kabaals of the world, but Eleish couldn't help wonder whether a kernel of truth existed in the argument.
Turning off the tap, Eleish reached for a towel. He stopped when he heard a soft thud. His heart skipped a beat. He listened. Nothing. He grabbed the towel and dried himself. He stepped out of the shower, put on his robe, and then stood inside his bathroom, listening. He waited a full minute without hearing another noise.
He stepped back into his living room. He had just sat down at his desk when he heard a bang, followed by three loud thumps.
His palms moistened. His heart smashed against his rib cage. The noise came from his front door.
His gun! For an agonizing moment, he wavered, but decided he had a higher priority to address. He reached for the mouse and clicked on the "new mail" icon and then frantically one-fingered typed the captain's e-mail address in the "send to" box.
Thud! Thud! The noises came from the door.
In the "message text" box, he typed wildly in note form. "Vancouver. Virus carrier = Sharifa Sha'rawi."
Eleish heard a series of sharp cracks, as someone emptied a round of gunfire into the door.
He typed: "Hazzir Kabaal = leader. Major Abdul Sabri?"
A creaking noise indicated the door hinges were beginning to give way.
He kept typing. "Al-Futuh Mosque. Sheikh Hassan."
Crash! More wood splintered.
"Base in Somalia," he typed. He grabbed the mouse, but his shaking hand overshot the "send" key twice before finally making contact. As soon as the musical tone confirmed that the e-mail had been sent, Eleish reached down and yanked the plug out from the back of the computer.
He leaped to his feet and ran for the kitchen.
Eleish made it to the living room just as his door toppled backward into the room. He froze in his tracks five feet from the countertop and his weapon. Someone else's gun pointed at his head.
A hulking man casually stepped over the smashed door and into the apartment. Eleish instantly recognized him as Major Abdul Sabri.
From ten feet away, Sabri cocked his head at Eleish. "Sergeant, I've been looking all over for you," he said softly.
"You could have just called." The joke seemed to Eleish like something one of his literary detective heroes might have said, but it drew no response from Sabri.
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