Perspectives, An Intriguing Tale of an American Born Terrorist (23 page)

Setting Jonathan up was easy. First we put all the information on his computer including emails from the suspected terrorist and left an audit trail back to his home address. Then our experts deleted the audit trail, knowing that the agency would trace his computer actions. We anticipated that the agency would be severe, but they exceeded our expectations. Before he was arrested, we sent Jonathan several leading emails knowing that he would respond, further showing his disloyalty to the agency.

The master plan turned into disaster when there was a freakish change in Matthew and Carly’s schedule, causing them to be in the building at the time of the explosion. There was supposed to be a contingency, someone on the inside who would make sure they were out of the building. When I find out who was responsible for that, God help him or her! Because of the foul-up Jonathan and Carly barely escaped with their lives, but my precious Matthew died in the explosion. My precious baby was incinerated in the blast! Matthew Tariq Anderson was a pure gift from God to me. As Carly is with Jonathan, so Matthew was with me. From the instant he was born, we were of the same spirit. And as he grew, our bond got closer. It was as if a part of my uncle lived in that little boy….I could see Tariq in his eyes every time I looked into his beautiful brown eyes. Matthew was special, he was going to be something great, a leader…..but then quickly, suddenly, it all ended. You have to believe me that I would never have intentionally killed my own baby!

My grief now is unbearable. Islee tries to comfort me, but I am lost in another pit, this one without a bottom. I have been receiving pressure from my cell, because phase three of the plan was supposed to begin immediately after Jonathan’s return from interrogation and I have been told that I have a vital role, but I have lost my purpose and cut off all contact with my cell. I had to, at least until I can sort through the torment in my own head. I thought that they would kill me when I stopped communicating, but all has gone quiet.

Now Jonathan and I are both alone, broken and angry. I am not sure whether the answer is to complete my mission or bare my soul to my husband, so that more innocent babies, like my Matthew, don’t die. I pray that somehow God or Allah or whoever may rule the hearts of men will see more overall good in what I’ve done than bad; but I don’t think that is possible because deep inside I know the evil angel has murdered the good angel and I have lost my soul. Carly reminds me of this every day.

Jonathan exited the black agency Suburban and walked in a daze toward the doorway of his Occaquan home. Mary came to meet him on the landing, just outside the door. She looked haggard and worn, with dark circles under her eyes and her usually well kept auburn hair straggly and showing streaks of gray. But even though she wasn’t wearing any makeup and was dressed in gray sweat pants and her favorite MIT sweatshirt, she still looked beautiful to Jonathan. He could see traces of crying, worrying and insomnia. She walked directly to him and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Oh my God,” she said. “What did they do to you?”

Jonathan hung his battered head and explained that he was no longer employed.

There were a few minutes of silence while she absorbed his words and then she spoke.

“Those sons of bitches!” she replied. “They’re not going to be content until they take everything from us. First Matthew, now this….I hate them, I hate them! When is it all going to end?” She started to cry and he grabbed hold of her to comfort her and she yielded.

“We’ll sort it out.”

“Sometimes I think I’m cracking up.”

“You’re not allowed to crack up; Carly and I need you now more than ever.”

He hugged her tighter knowing more than ever that, right now, she was one of only two people who were left in his life.”

“What are we going to do?” asked Mary. Jonathan didn’t have the strength or the wisdom to comfort her. “They gave me a 3 year package, but other than that, I don’t know, I have to think this through. It’s like a bad dream that I keep hoping will just end. More than anything else I’m just confused! I was working through it all but now after this it’s all coming back in a bloody torrent! All I can think of is what they’ve done to us. I’m pissed at the terrorists, pissed at the agency. Mary, there isn’t anything left for me.”

“So now you’re catching up with the way I’ve been feeling all along. Come on inside and let’s talk about it,” she replied

“Where’s Carly?”

“She’s taking a nap, she’ll be happy to see you. She’s the strangest little thing, talking more, but she comes out with the craziest stuff. I’m worried about her Jonathan. I caught her talking to her brother yesterday. They were playing a game and had the floor all wet. When I asked her what she was doing, she didn’t answer. Jonathan, she seldom talks to me. But I heard her telling Matthew to help her put the fire out.”

“What does the therapist say?” asked Jonathan.

“She says that it’s her mind’s way of dealing with it and that it’s not unusual. Kind of like a boat trying to level itself on wavy water. We all have to do it our own way. She says we should just let her go, but it’s very upsetting for me to watch and listen, too. She said that kids, especially young ones who have been hit with a trauma of this magnitude, sometimes pick up a kind of sixth sense. She said there is documented evidence of kids becoming extremely perceptive, she used the term ‘spiritually aware’ and able to read emotions, almost like what we always talked about as ESP.”

“She got all that from an imaginary friend?” asked Jonathan.

“It wasn’t just a friend, it was her dead brother,” bristled Mary. “Seven year olds shouldn’t do things like that.”

“So we have a little psychic on our hand.”

“I can’t wait until you see it.”

Jonathan entered the living room and plopped down on his favorite recliner, slouching as the impact of his shattered life continued to rattle through his system. He sat in the same place in the deafening silence in a mixture of depression and rage for about 30 minutes staring at a wall, never removing his sunglasses. It was 4 p.m. and streams of light from the late summer sun shone brightly through the westerly windows. Mary came in with a glass of iced tea. She sat across the room and said, “Listen Jon, we’ll get through this, we’ll figure something out. You have a lot of qualifications and I have a good job. We’ve got our savings, and three years of severance is pretty good. Maybe I’ll take a leave of absence and the 3 of us can just go away for a while, take a vacation and try to forget who we are. Maybe we can figure out a way to erase this past year and start over.”

Jonathan sat up and looked over at her, “You’re right! We are going to have to leave, at least me. For there ever to be a chance of having peace again, I have to find these animals and make them pay and the only way I know how to do that is to disappear!”

“You’re not going anywhere without me!” she snapped back.

“I may have to, at least for a little while. It’s the only way we’ll ever be able to start over again.”

Mary was startled by his comment, but was distracted before she could explore it further. Carly came down the hallway rubbing her eyes with one hand and holding Bruiser in the other. She was dressed in pink flannel pajamas covered with bunnies. Her feet made a funny noise as she scuffed her way on the hardwood floors. She hesitated when she saw the back of her father’s head in the chair, but when her mother nodded, she ran as fast as she could and jumped into his lap.

“Daddy!”

Jonathan spun around.

“Hi pumpkin.”

“Daddy! I missed you! Where did you go? You didn’t call me. Me and Bruiser were so worried about you. Daddy, I missed you so much.”

“And I missed you.”

“Bruiser said that you were coming home today, but I didn’t believe him.”

Mary rolled her eyes.

“And I take it that Bruiser is feeling better,” answered Jonathan carefully grabbing the bear and looking him over. Bruiser was coming apart at the seams. One of his arms was attached by only a few threads and he had lost his other eye.

Mary read his mind, “She won’t let go of him long enough for me to sew him up.”

“Bruiser’s fine,” answered Carly grabbing him back, not so gently.

She giggled and then cocked her head looking at her daddy as if something was wrong. “Bruiser wants to know why you’re wearing sunglasses in the house? He says it’s rude.” And then he could see that a mischievous thought was working its way through her head, but before he could figure out what it was, she reached up, grabbed his glasses and pulled them off. Her demeanor changed when she saw the burns and the sores around his eyes. First she let out a half-scream, but then looked away and collected herself.

“Daddy, did someone hurt you?” she asked.

“Yes sweetie, but I’ll be okay.”

She put her head down and said, “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“What are you sorry for pumpkin?”

“That I was too far away.” She gently reached her little fingers towards his sores as if by lightly touching them she could heal them. Her eyes focused on the wounds and her touch was as gentle as a feather.

Jonathan was paralyzed by her tenderness and sat still absorbing the empathy.

Mary wasn’t quite as understanding.

“Jesus Christ, what did they do to you?” She screamed startling both Carly and Jonathan. She sprang from the couch and pulled Carly off him and then sat on the arm of the recliner and examined his eyes. She was aghast when she saw the blistering effects of the nitrogen on his eyelids and lashes.

Carly started to cry, partly because she was startled, but mostly because she hadn’t finished her procedure.

Mary saw that she was upset, “You need to let Mommy look,” snapped Mary. “Go play with your bear!

Carly stuck out her lower lip and retreated to the kitchen table where she began mumbling something about her mother’s meanness to Bruiser.

“It’s all part of their procedure,” said Jonathan to Mary.

“What, to torture people? You didn’t do anything! Those God Damn Sons of Bitches!”

“Please Mary, the language,” he said rolling his eyes towards Carly.

Mary continued, “Oh my God! I thought this only happened in third world nations. What kind of animals were you working for?”

“Mary calm down,” he answered, glancing again towards Carly as a signal that she might get her upset.

Jonathan continued in a matter-of-fact voice. “Mary, you know all this stuff. It happens everywhere. It’s how they get information. The CIA invented most of the worst techniques.”

“But this is the 21st century in the United States of America! You are a federal employee, a US citizen! Jonathan you worked for those bastards your whole life and this is how they reward you!”

“We all lost our rights after 9/11 with anything regarding terror.”

“But what does that have to do with you? You’re not a terrorist!”

“In this day and age, everyone is guilty, until proven innocent.”

“Look at what they’ve done to you. I’ll tell you who the terrorist is!”

“Mary, don’t talk like that!”

“Jonathan, look in the God Damn mirror and have a good look at what your civilized government has done to you.”

“It’s your government too,” answered Jonathan.

“Unfortunately, you’re right,” said Mary.

“Let me have a closer look.” Mary craned her neck so that she was looking directly into his eyes. “Oh God! Your pupils are completely dilated and the tissue all around your eye is burned! And it looks like there’s some internal bleeding in the cornea. We have to take you to the hospital right now.”

Carly snapped out of her imaginary world and started to cry, “I don’t want Daddy to go to the hospital.”

“It’s okay pumpkin, Daddy’s fine. I can see okay. Mary, you need to settle down, the sores will heal; we have other things that we need to take care of first.”

Carly seemed satisfied with her father’s remark and her young mind had already shifted to a new make-believe game she was playing with Bruiser.

He turned to Mary and whispered, “Mary you have to listen to me. I need to get away from these people; it will be worse the next time.”

“Why would they bother you anymore?” she answered. “They had you and could have done anything they wanted with you.”

“They’re going to wake up to the fact that whatever I do will be interference or a bother to them. They expect me to take a graceful bow out of this and quietly accept my severance. But you know as well as I that there’s no way I can do that. We’ve been through too much.”

Mary sat back and thought about the situation. “Jonathan, I’ll go along with this, under two conditions. First, you include me in everything that you do. That means, take me where you go and let me help you. It’s my war just as much as yours. I want to look into the eyes of the person who killed my baby. And second, that you come clean with me, I mean 100% clean, on everything that you’ve been hiding from me all these years.” She folded her arms and waited for him to acknowledge her deal.

“It’s going to be dangerous.”

“I don’t care…..agreed.”

“Agreed,” answered Jonathan.

“Where do we start?”

“By getting out of here.”

“Do you have a plan, a place to go?”

“Mary, I have one condition. You need to trust me and not interfere with what I do. I’m trained in this sort of thing, okay?” He waited for her to nod and finally she conceded.

Mary moved close to Jonathan. “Come sit next to me on the couch.” She put her hand on his knee and lowered her voice so Carly couldn’t hear, “Now that I know what you were doing in there, I mean at the CIA, I have to ask you some questions, you know things that have really been bothering me. And you have just agreed to give me straight answers, right?”

“Go ahead,” answered Jonathan.

“Have you killed people?”

Jonathan was taken aback by the question, but then smiled, remembering a line from the movie
True Lies
, and replied in his best Austrian accent, “Only bad people.”

“Jonathan, this isn’t funny! I’m going to ask you again, Did you kill people?”