The Courier: A Ryan Kealey Thriller (38 page)

The funeral of Largo Kealey was very small and extremely private. The press had been briefed about the incident on the river, and the name of the hero had not been provided for security reasons. Ryan Kealey was his only surviving relative. He would turn up in searches, contacted for reaction. The DNI could not allow that.

The heads of the intelligence departments were all at the funeral home on Central Avenue, including the secretary of Homeland Security. The press was not informed of the arrest of Lt. JG Heyder Namjoo. The virus had been traced to his department and his strongly, consistently expressed opinions that were contrary to evidence earned him a red flag by internal security. He was put under surveillance and arrested as he attempted to leave the country on a personal day off.

The press was informed about the U-boat and its cargo, and there was extensive coverage of Germany’s debate about what to do with the crew. The consensus was to leave them, but fear of souvenir hunters influenced their decision to remove the remains of the crew members and to bury them at sea. The remains were identified, including those of Karl Rasp. There was no one to notify and no one to mourn. The nation itself was quiet since, however patriotic, the crew was serving a heinous cause.

To Kealey, who had read about Rasp in his uncle’s transcript, this denouement was worse than the long-ago death of the seamen. It reminded how morality, like history, was determined by the winners.

After the graveside service at a cemetery in nearby Hewlett—where Largo was interred in a plot beside his wife—Kealey, Allison, and Rayhan sat on a lonely bench on the grounds. Rayhan had not cried during the service; she had not known Largo well enough. But she was very subdued.

“I was glad to see everyone there,” she said.

“Especially without the press,” Kealey replied. Realizing he’d overdone it, he added, “It was nice. But Largo saved us—our lives and our reputations. He finished our job.”

“His own, too,” Allison said. “You passed the baton to a man who needed to rediscover what was important in him,
to
him.”

Kealey looked at Rayhan. “You may want to join the caravan before it leaves. I’m going to stay here for a while.”

The young woman looked back at the black limousines lining the walk and the men milling outside them. “They want me back to help study the device. I should go.”

Kealey smiled at her and nodded. She smiled back and hugged Allison, who was between them.

“I’ll see you in Washington,” she said to them both, then turned quickly and left.

“She did a helluva job, too,” Kealey said. “Rose like the flag at sunup.”

“You did your job, too,” Allison said.

“I did okay,” Kealey said. “We got the result, so I can give myself that. Khalid will worm his way out—he’ll be outraged, promise an investigation, say it was a rogue operation, the guilty will be punished. I’m sure my friend in Iran isn’t faring as well. Maybe, if he’s lucky, they’ll just retire him.”

“Speaking of flagpoles,” Allison said knowingly.

“What?”

“Retirement.”

“Yeah. I don’t think I’ll be running that one up again. I can’t say I’m leaving, because clearly my uncle never did. But I need something else.”

“Can I make a suggestion? Don’t think about it here, now.”

“No, you’re right about that,” Kealey admitted.

“Do you want me to go back with the others?”

“I’m going to go over to Uncle Largo’s house,” he told her. “See what he saw—maybe think some of the things he thought. Look through some mementoes. I don’t think he’d mind.”

Allison smiled warmly and took his hand. “I think I’ll go back with the others then.”

He nodded.

“Sorry, I have to ask—you sure you’re going to be all right?”

He nodded again. “I have my phone; I’ll call a cab. I have Largo’s key. It was in the room you got him. I’ll be fine.”

Allison touched his shoulder and turned away. He watched her go, watched them all go, then sat there until a caretaker told him it was time to close the gates.

Then Ryan Kealey left, thinking that Uncle Largo’s own words were perhaps all that needed to be said:

“
He died with his boots on . . .
”

A
sif Kardar crushed the brake when he heard the hiss of the tire through the open window of the bread truck. The pads were old, and they squealed as the squat white vehicle lurched to a halt. The hard stop caused the peppermint air freshener to swing in long arcs from the rearview mirror and a marble in the ashtray to smack violently front to back.

The young man sighed as he looked out the mud-splashed windshield, stared at the wide dirt street awash with the red of the rising sun. He had only a half dozen or so blocks to go before he reached the market. Why now?

Because Allah willed it,
thought the devout Sunni.
Why else does anything happen?

A boy on a badly dented bicycle passed him. Then another. And a third. They waved as they passed. Asif knew them. They shared breakfast at the coffeehouse some mornings—though they didn’t today.

He couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter.

The young men were workers who lived near Asif, in cinder-block shacks in the
katchi abadi,
the slum off Service Road West 110. They were commuting along Seventh Avenue, past the doctors’ offices, banks, and parcel companies, and then on to Kashmir Highway, near the universities, post offices, and the always popular Sunday market, on their way to the richer sections of the capital, where they were employed as street cleaners. All of them saw the irony in that, yet all of them were happy to have jobs. It was either this or the military.

Asif found himself grinning. In the year he had been driving this route, he had never suffered a blowout. He supposed he was due. And it was no one’s fault, he knew. Metal shards were everywhere in the streets of the slum: pieces of discarded appliances, rusted tools, even belt buckles and pocket watches.

And the remnants of car bombs. There had been three in the last year, all of them accidents. They were meant to blow up
after
leaving here and arriving at their destinations—some government building or military installation. Except for the loud bangs, the children liked it when vehicles blew up. They quickly came and collected the fenders and fan blades to dig in the rubble for treasure. To a child, anything free was a treasure.

Asif’s smile drooped as he considered his situation. He looked at his watch.

Drive on,
he thought. He could probably make it, even with a rim that was clanking and sparking.

The morning sun was rising higher, clearing the clay tile roofs of the structures that lay ahead. This was the “better” section of the slum. Where he lived, the roofs were all corrugated metal. The daily sun-scorched metal created such intense heat within the homes that being outside in direct sunlight was preferable to being slow cooked alive inside. And while the temperature on the roof of the buildings was occasionally more comfortable for sleeping, the distorted, grooved surface was no place to remain grilling for too long. He peered at the buildings. There was something he was supposed to do....

He shifted gears, started the truck ahead slowly. What was it?

Clanking and growling, the truck rounded a sharp curve. Two hundred or so meters to the east he noticed soldiers standing watch outside a Humvee. It was the end of the slum. They were parked in front of a one-story building that was used by South Korean Christians to feed hungry children. At one time it was a police recruiting station. It was firebombed, but the missionaries had plastered it over. That was what outsiders did. They covered things with paint and activity and believed that they had begun to heal what was wrong underneath. The soldiers were looking at him.

Asif stared back. He had a spare tire. He should stop and replace the blown-out one. If he continued driving, the men would wonder why he was willing to do permanent damage to his truck. Spare parts were not plentiful, unless one were willing to hammer out the bent and broken pieces found in scrap yards, and what he was doing was not just odd. It was
suspicious
.

He had no good answer to that.

He slowed, but he did not stop. Something told him to drive on.

The early morning air was already warm, and the driver was perspiring. He was wearing a white silk kurta, a hand-me-down from his elder brother who was in the army. He dragged a sleeve across his forehead and looked anxiously ahead. There was a Shiite mosque across the street. Men were beginning to arrive for prayer. Something about it seemed familiar—not just because he had seen it before as he drove by. It was something else.

The street was suddenly paved beneath him. The truck chugged over the lip, the naked rim cutting the asphalt, the glove compartment snapping open, the marble rolling, the air freshener smacking the windshield. Three of the eight soldiers started in his direction. The one in front had his arms raised, motioning for him to stop.

You mustn’t,
Asif told himself.

If he stopped, they would examine his truck. That was what the soldiers did at checkpoints. The sweat was no longer only on Asif’s brow; it was everywhere. They would surely see that; the sun had just cleared the low rooftops and, shining redly, was striking him directly. He felt as though he were naked, exposed, and starting to melt. One of the soldiers talked into a radio. Asif couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he knew that tone, flat and low. They were assuming that his intentions were hostile.

They weren’t, were they?

He was confused.

Asif reached for the bottle of water that lay on the seat beside him. He saw a few young families coming down the street, toward the Christian building. The doors would not open for another hour, but for many of these impoverished souls—many Afghan orphans who had been taken in by relatives, families who had come to Islamabad to escape the Taliban or the war—this would be the only meal of the day, the only food they had enjoyed since the previous morning’s charity.

Asif looked ahead, past the soldiers and toward the mosque. The Shiites were gathering in larger numbers.

The murderous fools,
he thought. They believed that only the heirs of ‘Al
, the fourth caliph, were the true successors of Muhammad the Prophet. Their idiocy had bred a thousand years of bloodshed.
You hate them, don’t you?

Do you?
he wondered.

“
Rokna!
” the soldier in front shouted in Urdu. “Stop!” He had already unshouldered the G3A3 assault rifle and was aiming it at the truck.

Yes,
Asif decided. He hated the Shias. And the military.

The young Pakistani put the water bottle down and pressed hard on the gas. He reached toward the sun-faded brown dashboard as gunfire shattered the window. Bullets punched through Asif’s shoulders and chest, and he was knocked back hard against the seat as he pressed the cigarette lighter. Bloody and no longer in control of his dying body, he was unable to reach the marble....

Thirty pounds of plasticized pentaerythritol tetranitrate explosives wired to the underside of the dashboard exploded. The truck literally expanded as the concussive force of the PETN hit the inside walls, splitting them. The vehicle vomited engine parts to the front and sacks full of nails, bolts, and glass to the rear. It pushed a wall of sound in all directions. The soldiers were simultaneously knocked back and torn open, rusted chrome, burning canvas, and grotesque body parts flung in all directions, as the blast rolled toward an empty lot to the south and the mosque to the north. The twisted chassis of the old truck tumbled toward the ancient structure, stamped forcefully across the door and lower façade before falling back onto the street. Several men, just arriving, were crushed by the initial strike, while several inside were injured by falling lanterns and flying pieces of broken stone. But the structure itself held.

The remaining soldiers and the missionary building were peppered with shrapnel, none very seriously, save for a young Christian volunteer who had just come to the window to pull open the shade. Shattered glass razored her face and chest, and she stumbled backward, slipping on a quick-made slick of her own blood. Rats ran quickly from behind the shattered foundation, waves of them pouring through the rubble like water. From above, a flaming kestrel dropped to the ground, its wings slapping furiously and then not at all.

The sound of the explosion faded quickly, the rain of debris stopped, and soon all that remained were sirens from a few late-model vehicles, the moans of the wounded, and the smoke that obscured the sun with an ugly charcoal film. Shopkeepers and pedestrians who ran toward the scene were silent, their ears filled with their own racing blood.

Dr. Ayesha Gillani was sitting at an open-air café near the market when she heard—and felt—the powerful explosion. It echoed through the crooked streets like faraway thunder. In the square, people on bicycles stopped, turned, and looked down the street as smoke followed the sounds, curling lazily from between the low buildings. Vendors ran in fright from their stands and sought cover in alleys, in shops, behind trees, anything that was far from parked vehicles. These things often happened in twos and threes.

Not this time,
Dr. Gillani thought.

Though she knew that, there were things that had surprised her. The location of the blast, for one. She looked at her watch. The timing of the blast was off, as well.

It was early, too,
she thought. Six thirteen. It wasn’t supposed to happen for another two minutes.

The changes were unexpected but not unwelcome. There were always variables in even the best-planned scenario. A rotating checkpoint. A mechanical malfunction. An accident. A distraction.

The important thing is he pulled the trigger,
she told herself. That was the most difficult and time-consuming part of the process.

She took out her cell phone, sent a one-letter text message—S, for
success
—and resumed eating her
n
sht
, a traditional Pakistani breakfast of
paratha
, a flatbread, as well as mangoes and Earl Grey. The tea felt much cooler than it had moments before. Or maybe it was her. The anticipation had passed. The event was history. And her confidence—of which she was the harshest critic—had been validated.