The 56th Man (22 page)

"The World Trade Towers? Quite honestly, I
only thought of it as another terrorist attack. We discussed how
slipshod American security was. That was all. At the time, of
course, we did not suspect you would be paying us a visit."

"But you were with them."

"I don't understand what you mean. I had some
access to government intelligence. Saddam and bin Laden? They
loathe each other. We had nothing to do--"

"But you were with them," Sandra
insisted.

"Very well," Ari sighed.

"And then the great Baghdad super cop
chickens out and comes running to Uncle Sam. All by himself, no
family, no wife--"

Ari's arm shot out so fast the diners next to
them didn't see what happened. He judged his action perfectly,
snagging the gum out of Sandra's mouth before she could so much as
flinch.

She gasped, placing a hand on either side of
her jaw. "You hit me!" she hissed.

"I did nothing of the kind." With a look of
disgust, Ari pressed the gum into his napkin and took up a second
napkin to wipe off his hand. "This is an unsightly and perverse
habit."

"How did you..." Sandra was astonished. His
fingers had scarcely brushed her lips. "Is that how you shoved the
mouth guard in before applying shock torture?"

"There was no need for dexterity at Abu
Ghraib," Ari said. "If the prisoner bit off his tongue during
electroconvulsive therapy, so be it. If the prisoner did not open
his mouth for us, and we wanted it open, we broke it open for
him."

Sandra forgot her seat was bolted down and
attempted to pull away without standing.

"Those fuckers," she said, still keeping her
voice low, still on the job--and part of the job was to not draw
undue attention. "They didn't say a word about this to us. Not a
peep. You should be in Gitmo. At the very least."

"Guantanamo’s for peasants. Get me that file
on the Riggins, Sandra."

"Go fuck yourself."

For a brief moment, Ari unveiled himself. Let
her feel the invisible menace. Sandra fell silent, looked away,
stood up slowly.

"I have not been humored, Sandra. Your people
are awaiting vital information. I will not give it to them until I
have that file. I will have it."

Sandra began to shake. She scurried by him
and passed through the railing, leaving her shopping cart
behind.

“
Baraka Allah
,”
said Ari, sipping his coffee.

TWELVE

The Americans were wilting under the Iraqi
sun, but the translator was suffocating. His olive-brown balaclava
seemed to circulate an extra layer of heat between the fabric and
his face--a regular convection oven. Ghaith felt he was breathing
his own blood. He was crouched several yards away from the
soldiers, a target for glances that varied from courteous nods to
vacuous grins.

They were huddled in the narrow strip of
shade provided by a HESCO barrier—oversized, reinforced garbage
bags stuffed with rubble and piled up to form a stout defensive
wall.

Captain Rodriguez and Lieutenant Pito emerged
from the CP at the same moment Private Ropp was holding out a
packet in Ghaith's direction and calling in sing-song:

"Hey Haji, you want four fingers of
death?"

"Sergeant Mastin," Rodriguez said loudly
enough for them all to hear, "Is that soldier trying to give that
man pork?"

"It's beef, Sir!" Ropp jumped up, saluting.
"It says so on the pack! They eat beef!"

Rodriguez did not seem to hear the
explanation, or felt it was Ropp's attitude, and not the beef
franks he was offering Ghaith, that deserved a deaf ear.

"I'm going to the TOC for the new grid. Read
this squad the Keep-Off-the-Grass Riot Act, then get them and the
rest of Blue Platoon ready."

The soldiers exchanged embarrassed glances.
So…Rodriquez had learned their phrase for the weekly or bi-weekly
or tri-weekly reminders Pito was compelled to give his platoon,
negative pep rallies that never failed to drain the men of pep. But
Pito would have none of it. He nodded at Sergeant Mastin, whose
face seemed to pucker.

Captain Rodriguez and Lieutenant Pito had
walked out of earshot when Private First Class Tuckerson turned on
Ropp. "So you're the rat fuck stealing the dogs out of the
MRE’s."

Ropp was temporarily saved by Sergeant
Mastin, who called his squad together, then asked Ghaith to stand
next to him.

"Okay, Haji here is our new interpreter,"
said Mastin, nodding at Ghaith. “You are to treat him with all the
respect you show your weapons. Do not offend him in any way, or you
fuckchops will answer to me. The contractors have stolen all the
decent terps in this sector for their new cement plant, and unless
I miss my guess we’ll lose Haji to the tactical HUMINT team in
short order. In the meantime, though, Haji has kindly accepted
employment with us.

“
It looks like we might do
some FISHing this afternoon, so…if for any reason you have to enter
a Shia mosque…and it better be a damn good reason, like you just
saw Godzilla ducking for cover…there’s a whole slew of don’ts for
you to observe. Do not touch the following things: shrines, books
or walls, mainly the western corner. If someone’s praying, don’t
walk in front of him because that interferes with his god-signal
and he’ll have to start all over again, including performing
something called
wudu,
which I
think means ‘hand-washing’—and you know how these people dote on
cleanliness. Don’t talk, and if you have to talk, whisper. Don’t
talk unless spoken to, which means Ali Babba first, you second. If
that makes you dead, you must’ve talked out of turn. When you walk
in a mosque, someone might offer you a cup of water, which is
guaranteed to contain Ebola and every other disease of the Near,
Far and Middle East, Africa included. Take the cup, say
‘shukran
’
to
the guy, then hand it back
. ‘Shukran’,
incidentally, means ‘thanks’ in basic Moronese.
Don’t immediately pull out your antibacterial Handi-wipe to clean
your hands. This might be misinterpreted. We do
not
find these folks disgusting, got
that?

“
All-purpose
greeting
: ‘al-salamu ‘alaykum’.
All-purpose response
: ‘wa ‘alaykum
as-salam’.
To indicate respect, put
‘ostaath’
in front of a man’s name
and
‘ostaatha’
in front of a
woman’s name. I highly recommend that you refrain from speaking to
women at all. These are not regimental ground sheets or desert
queens. You see a
habeebatee,
look the other way. I’m dead serious on this. Habeeb will kill
you if look at his woman the wrong way, or for too long, or step on
her shadow. I can’t say I care about your sorry asses, but Ali
Babba will kill the woman, too, and all for just you looking at
her. You got appliance rags in your issue. Dump your wads in there,
if you have to. We’ll be getting a woman translator in here for
today’s fun. Let her do all the female talk.

“
Don’t use last names alone.
This is considered a serious diss and Habeeb’ll blow your dicktrap
right off your face. Don’t go off if an Iraqi doesn’t look you in
the eye. They don’t get into eye-gazing hereabouts. You’ll also see
Iraqi men hugging and kissing and holding hands. That’s just how
they are…and I’ll leave it at that. Also…the following words are
totally unsat: dunecoon, sand nigger, towelhead, camel jockey,
etcetera. Some of these people speak English, and they’ll know what
you’re saying. Always use your right hand when giving or accepting
anything. They don’t know Charmin’ around here. They use the left
hand for hygiene. I know we’ve got some southpaws here. Think twice
before you twitch.

“
Don’t show the soles of
your feet. It’s a big insult. Don’t ask me why. Do not consume
alcohol in public. Do not stick up your thumb…like so. This is like
flipping the bird at home. And don’t flip the bird, either, because
flipping the bird here is the same as there. Do not use your index
finger to call someone over. Don’t use a finger to point, use the
whole hand. Make that the right hand. Don’t talk to Iraqis with
your hands in your pockets. Don’t cross your legs. Do not
compliment an Iraqi on his lovely child—this attracts the Evil Eye.
Do not ask an Iraqi not to smoke. Do not signal with your palms
up.

“
Try not to shoot any FIF’s.
That’s Free Iraqi Forces. Yeah, I know it’s hard to believe we got
any friends around here. Try not to shoot any ICDC’s from the
Civilian Defense Corps, either. They might not exactly be friends,
but they go with whoever pays them, and we’ve paid them. As a
general rule, try not to shoot any pax who aren’t shooting or
RPGing us.

“
Got all that? Don’t raise
your hand, Rossco, I didn’t ask for questions.”

“
I was just wondering if in
all this ‘don’t’ we have any ‘do’. I mean, if I pick my nose, do I
start a world war?”

The squad was staring at Ghaith, as though
expecting him to answer. He knew he spooked some of them with his
anonymity, his bank-robber ski mask and probing silence.

“
We’re going to broom down
Al Qods Street,” Sergeant Mastin continued, ignoring Rossco. “S-2
says the Mahdi Army might try another attack on the district
advisory council. I want every swinging dick back here in ten
minutes. No sickcall rangers. It’s only 130 degrees Fahrenheit. CS
and MO!”

“
Hooah!”

As the men ran into the abandoned Al Thawra
police barracks they had commandeered, Ghaith caught Mastin’s
attention.

“
Where is the female
interpreter? The captain promised there would be one.”

Mastin had mentioned the possibility of
‘FISHing’, which was the soldiers’ informal acronym for ‘Fighting
in Someone’s House’, which they used to replace the official
‘Fighting in Built-Up Areas’. The irony was that, while it was
against U.S. Army policy to put women on the firing line,
Arabic-speaking women soldiers were essential in house-to-house
searches.

Sergeant Mastin looked at Ghaith with a face
as stiff and uncommunicative as Ghaith’s balaclava. “Promises
aren’t Army issue.”

It was a little after two when Ari returned
from Wal-Mart and his first conversation since New York with anyone
connected to his handlers. There must be large gaps in the U.S.
Marshal Service's file on him, or else Sandra would have been far
less charming. To an outsider, there seemed no improvement in
America's security since 9/11. The vital agencies were still not
communicating with each other. Optimists declared this a good
thing. No one wanted yet another police state.

He lugged his new sledge hammer and other
hardware store items into the living room and laid them out. He
opened the front door, then studied the central air control in the
hallway. One setting said 'Fan Only'. He turned this on. Mechanical
life entered the house, air thrumming through its tin or steel or
fiberglass ducts.

Going into the kitchen, Ari stripped to his
shorts, then went downstairs, pinpointed the spot in the basement
directly under the living room, and sat on the cool floor. He
closed his eyes and concentrated, though without any real hope that
he would hear the signature tune he was seeking. Something soft
would not rattle, and a solid object would need a jet blast to make
its presence known. But he tried.

Every so often he would hear a knock.
Once...twice.... Then it would stop. He scooted closer to the wall.
He did not want to press his ear against the paneling, knowing his
own heartbeat would interfere with his hearing. Finally, though, he
tried that, too.

And heard distinctly something tap-tapping
inside the ductwork. Could it be part of the normal mechanical
digestion of an HVAC system? It sounded as though it was coming
from overhead.

He returned upstairs and repeated the
process, seating himself first in the center of the room, then
slowly easing over to the wall beneath the overhead register. When
he finally rested his ear against the cool painted sheet rock he
again heard the rattle. Just as faint, and now it sounded as though
it was coming from below. He stretched out along the bottom trim
and held his breath. Just as he predicted, his heart thudded with
annoying, if reassuring, persistence. The sound in the wall was
almost tender, like the click and thump of the cook's rolling pin
when she lifted it off the chapatti dough as she prepared the
family's weekly Indian dinner. It almost matched what he was
expecting....

He lay like that for fifteen minutes, almost
dozing, allowing his near trancelike state to navigate his thoughts
through the metallic (or fiberglass) caverns. And then he heard a
soft thud that did not come from inside the wall. He opened his
eyes.

"Ah, Sphinx, you yellow devil. I was
expecting you. I have some nice fish…"

"What are you doing?"

Ari shot up into a seating position and
swiveled around on his buttocks to face Louis Carrington.

Been expecting you too,
Detective Sergeant
.

"Pardon me, Captain..." Ari stood. "Let me
put some clothes on."

He gave the wrong rank to sow a moment's
consternation, allowing him time to gather his wits. Carrington
hung back in the living room while Ari went into the kitchen and
quickly donned his shirt and trousers.

"You're in pretty good shape," Carrington
said when Ari returned to the front. "Are architects expected to
work out every day?"

"It's not a requirement," Ari shrugged
modestly. "Only a personal preference."