The Architect of Revenge: A September 11th Novel (19 page)

Pruitt frowned.

“Remember…” he started to say but held his words as he went to refill his glass. “Remember…I said Wes’s voice sounded different. I recognized that…but why?”

“I don’t know, Blue,” she said, using his pet name and affectionately touching his hand. “Do you think Jane Bonwitt might know?”

“We haven’t spoken since the memorial service. Worth a try, I guess.” He rolled his eyes. “Once she gets talking, though, it’ll take me the rest of the day to get off the phone.”

He scrolled through his directory. The thirty-minute conversation yielded minimal information. Connie got the edited version.

“She saw him at his townhouse after he sold it. Said Wes looked
foreign
. That was the word she used. Dark and shaggy…” Pruitt tried a smile. “She talked to him, but he was vague and…just took off in his car. That’s odd. Anyway, she hired a private investigator. I guess he found Wes but then lost him. She mentioned a GPS…hard to understand that part.”

He looked at the ceiling. “She wasn’t too clear, never has been. In any event, nothing more has transpired there.” Pruitt’s despondency worsened. “I hope Wes isn’t lost to mescal tequila in a Mexican gutter.”

“I remember,” Connie said, “Ross Merrimac called, asking if we’d seen or heard Wes.”

“Come to think of it, he did, didn’t he? That was a while ago, and we told him maybe just a phone call. I don’t remember.” Pruitt sucked air through closed lips as his open eyes flared wider. “So Wes never went back to work…”

Connie nodded.

“At the time I figured the poor guy just needed more space. I mean, we felt miserable for months. Still do.”

The parents had shared tears, but their overt despair quieted as each developed separate ways to reflect—Connie replanting or weeding the numerous flower beds surrounding their home and Jon tending to Cay’s blue orchids or currycombing Goethe and the mare.

“I can only imagine how distraught Wes is,” Jon continued. “I just wish he’d shared it. Damn surgeons…Maybe we could have gotten him some counseling.” His face grimaced. “Without more, at this point…I just don’t know what to think. Or where to start, for that matter.”

“Blue, darling, could any of your friends help?”

Her husband shrugged. Retired from a technology company he founded and sold, he had stayed in touch with his associates, but as they retired also, everyone’s contacts in the intelligence agencies dwindled.

“I don’t know who I’d call or…how to explain it.” His chin now rested on his clasped hands. “When I was inside, it was just a finger snap.”

Cornelia tapped his kneecap. “How about Zach?”

“I can’t do that.”

“Darling, you’ve been friends for years, longer than you’ve known me. You helped him all the way.”

“That’s not a small call.” He looked at the empty snifter. “Zach’s got a lot on his plate right now.”

“Jon, listen to me!” Connie’s voiced raised—a rarity. “What do
you
think Cay would say?
‘Fine, Dad! Abandon him!’
We owe her more.” Connie began crying. “She
loved
Wes, and we do too…”

His wife gave him her unyielding look, one he understood.

“Zach called you the first chance he could…the next day! He’s your friend and he’ll help you…as a friend.”

“Okay.” It was the best solution but still difficult. “Okay, sweetheart…of course…for Cay.”

John Pruitt knew his daughter would have insisted, never giving her father a moment’s peace, pestering him until he had exhausted every option. Cay’s love for Wes was intense.

He went to his safe, removed a file, and called the private exchange. A professional voice answered.

“Jon Pruitt calling for President Reeves, if he’s available.”

“Please hold, sir. I’ll see if the president can take your call.”

Western Mediterranean Sea Early September 2003

“A
’safeer batnee bitsawsaw.”
The birds of my stomach are singing
. Morgan squeezed the water out of the mop. He was getting ravenous even after scrubbing the heads.

Jamil gave an approving smile as Morgan refilled the bucket with fresh detergent and water.

“Barif, your Arabic is better,” he said.

Jamil took pride in polishing Morgan’s syntax and idioms, reminding him daily how being raised in America had deprived him of his heritage. The tutoring also helped pass the tedium of the long voyage.

“Shukran.”
Thank you.

From his years of surgery training and more recently working with Tony, Morgan knew there remained no substitute for learning other than total immersion. The thousands of hours he’d spent listening to the language on his iPod and car stereo, working with a tutor, and attending the mosques had laid a solid foundation, but it wasn’t like conversing in it all day long. He was getting more fluent. Reading the cursive glyphs right to left, however, still remained damn near impossible.

Morgan grinned at Jamil, pleased that what started with the T-shirt calling card, revolver flash, and strip-club near-calamity forged the camaraderie that had gotten Morgan aboard the
Sagar.
The most reassuring component, however, was that Morgan hadn’t ended up as trolling bait off the stern. Captain Arwan still made it clear he didn’t trust him, even though Morgan used his last American money in Trinidad to buy a real passport—at least, a real
counterfeit
one. The Lebanese document had all the necessary stamps.

Morgan suspected it wasn’t the first time the shopkeeper had assisted Arwan. The store was nestled deep in a side alley with liquor bottles and cigarette cartons covering the small window. For the hour Morgan had waited, the owner’s daughter helped only one other customer. Once the shop emptied, she offered Morgan a pipe packed with fragrant marijuana buds and pulled aside a hanging dolphin-festooned beach towel, motioning for him to join her inside the closet-size space.

Morgan shook his head politely. He wasn’t interested in the slightest.

“After the prayers we eat,” said Jamil as Morgan again wrung out the mop with his calloused and muscled hands. Morgan knew the Dhuhr was approaching. He had learned during his training to sense the time. He looked forward to the prayers—their powers had become consuming, the private minutes reflective.

The men washed their hands and feet in preparation, removed their shoes, and faced the bow, praying together. When they finished, both men sat on their rears to stretch their legs.

Jamil laughed. “I’m certain when you tell Arwan his toilet is clean, he’ll piss all over it immediately so he can command you to clean it again.”

“I don’t mind,” said Morgan.

“The captain is vermin,” Jamil stated. “But God uses people to his purpose, revealed when He alone decides.”

During the midday meal, a crewmember asked Morgan about his family.

“My father was a dog,” Morgan began.

To demean a father with such words was a severe insult that drew everyone’s attention in the mess. Morgan told his scripted lie about the newlyweds who immigrated to Chicago from Pakistan in the 1960s
.

“The dog learned the tongue of the infidel and forbade my mother to speak Arabic near me.” The story was composed to create intrigue but self-adulation. “He never knew, but I
did
hear it,” he boasted
.
“I was not American,”
he confessed, “and wanted to know more about my ancestors and their faith…even if some of my learning was in English.”

They praised him but condemned his father.

“My parents,” Morgan continued, “sent me to a school thick with Zionists.”

That created murmurs throughout the mess. Morgan occasionally made provocative statements to ferret out his shipmate’s sympathies.

“After my beautiful mother died, the dog turned to alcohol and to death,” he continued without remorse.
“With the freedom to open my eyes fully, I sought more spiritual nourishment.”Some around him clapped.

“After witnessing the unclean ways of America, I wanted a better path.”

“Will you ever go back?” one of his shipmates asked.

With a puffed chest Morgan said, “For jihad.”

The captain belched.

Gruff and bellicose, Arwan usually kept apart from the crew, except during meals. He listened, hoping he might hear a reason to throw Ali overboard, but by the time the
Sagar
passed Cape Verde, he begrudgingly appreciated his new deckhand, watching Morgan relentlessly scrub the toilets with undue pride for such a menial task. Arwan acknowledged to his first mate that Barif Ali must have been a hell of a school janitor in America. The man worked without complaints and never tired.

Despite Jamil’s sponsor, Arwan was never convinced that Ali was what he claimed to be.

“He asked about a person who has never been aboard this ship,”
Arwan said to Jamil after the
Sagar
got into open water outside Houston.
“He had an adulterated passport.”

“Does it matter?”
Jamil questioned.
“He wanted to leave America and has been honest about his desire. You have transported others less forthright. Ali works hard and obeys orders.”

“He could be running from the American authorities,”
the captain replied.
“We could be detained at a port. That could endanger the Sagar and what I’m doing for you—and could cost me money.”

“I searched his bag after he came aboard,”
said Jamil.

That
investigation yielded little—a worn waterproof backpack with a change of clothes, a woven rope satchel, nylon workout shorts, and varied denominations of American money totaling five hundred dollars.

“If he was a thief,”
Jamil said,
“there’d be more. His Koran was printed in 1970.”

“I still do not trust him,”
said Arwan.
“Because your presence alone makes my ship vulnerable.”

“You are being paid well for that,”
said Jamil sternly.
“I will watch Ali for you.”

Sensing the distrust, Morgan remained amidships in the presence of the others. After two weeks at sea, Jamil gave him a tour of the lower holds. Morgan learned the repainted
handy-size
freighter was built three decades earlier in China and bought the year before by a Pakistani corporation that registered her in the Maldives. The engine room was fascinating, but the ship’s belly revealed discreet secrets in several hidden boxes—liquor, rifles, small bricks of marijuana and cocaine—telltale markers that the
Sagar
was adept at transferring illicit goods as well as legal items.

He had chosen well.

Eventually Morgan began weaving around the cargo containers to the bow. The trip was a precarious undertaking. In the beginning a curious crewman followed him, watching Morgan fill two buckets with fire-hose water, hang them on a pipe, and perform three sets of ten squats and chest presses, plus a hundred push-ups, while the sea rolled underneath.

When the man returned with several more of the crew, they found Morgan straight-boarding, planked with his feet high against the bulkhead, resting on his elbows and reading his Koran as it lay on white cotton. When Morgan kneeled down to take a break, Hamid came over, laughing, and asked to use the equipment. When he discovered he didn’t have the strength to lift half of Morgan’s load, he rejoined the others who cheered and counted the repetitions as Morgan began his routine again.

After that no one ventured forward again while at sea, and Morgan was left alone. They would use the loudspeaker to call him to task or to prayers. Even Arwan encouraged him to stay on the forward deck whenever possible, making it no secret he hoped a random thirty-meter swell would drop a container on him and rid his ship of a passenger he was compelled to accept but never welcomed.

The bow was also important to Morgan for more than just exercise and reading. Close to the gunwales, an access hatch sealed a cave beneath, where no one entered willingly. He kept his backpack in there, hung behind a thick bundle of wires—its contents hidden until the time came for Morgan to disembark.

Chicken was frequently on the menu and Morgan enjoyed helping Nidal butcher them. He liked the round cook from the Philippines who always restocked the pens at their most recent port of call. One afternoon the breeze shifted so they had an opportunity to talk without being engulfed in the stink.

Morgan asked him about his family. Nidal spoke about the Southern Philippines and how his mother taught him to cook and season food.

Morgan asked about his father.

Nidal said angrily, “Dead. Most fathers are dead.”

“Why?”

Nidal spit over the side.

“Americans and Filipino government try to kill us. Rid islands, they say.
But they not succeed!” His bitterness was explicit.

“The swine are relentless,” Morgan concurred, grabbing another chicken and swinging it by its neck until he heard a crack. Squeezing tight to seal the blood vessels, he laid the bird on a cutting board and used one of Nidal’s knives to lop off its head. The wings beat fiercely as he lifted the body by the feet and held it over the water, directing the neck away from the railing. His hand relaxed. The blood spurted in pulses until finally slowing to a drip. The wings became still.

“Guns, drugs, bombs,” Nidal continued. “Ships like this are just one tool that will get our weapons to reach the enemy. We will kill the cowards when they sleep or lie awake! Hiding in the shadows will give them no victory…”

With the bird carcass draped over both hands, Morgan elevated it above their heads before offering it to Nidal. “We will spew the blood of their children in the streets and drink the tears their harlot mothers weep.”

Barif Ali flicked the chicken head out to sea and reached in the cage for another.