Fury kac-17 Page 21

  Jojola laughed again and slapped his knees. "There I go again, running off at the mouth," he said. "Must still be jumpy from the plane flight. Anyway, that was the long answer to your short question asking me about my son."

  Karp laughed too. He felt comfortable around Jojola. It wasn't just that what you see is what you get with the man-he was certainly deeper than might be expected of the police chief of a small Indian reservation. Karp wondered if the other members of his tribe were as introspective and insightful. Probably no more than the other members of my tribe are all wise as Solomon, he thought.

  "Where have you been, my friend?" Jojola said when he saw that Karp was back from his reflection.

  Karp chuckled. "Sorry, was just reliving tonight's bar mitzvah class…all this talk about spirituality. Let me ask you something."

  "Shoot."

  "So I take it you don't like leaving the res either," Karp said.

  "Nope."

  "Then why are you here?"

  Jojola pursed his lips and looked at the ceiling. When he looked back down, his dark eyes were glittering like black opals. "Are you ready for another long answer to a short question?"

  An hour later, Karp was still sitting in his chair in the dark with only a little light from the streetlamps illuminating the living room. Jojola had gone off to bed in the boys' room; they'd insisted he take the bottom bunk while they shared the top.

  Then Lucy had come bouncing in from whatever adventure she'd been on. He would have liked to remind her that this wasn't Taos, New Mexico, it was Gotham City, and young women did not flit around its streets unaccompanied at night. But she'd kissed him and said, "I'm going to bed. We can talk in the morning."

  He was thinking about going off to bed himself when he heard a key being inserted in the dead bolt of the front door. Gilgamesh picked up his head and whined. The door swung open, revealing a small, dark figure silhouetted against the light in the entryway.

  "Aren't you getting home a little past your curfew, young lady?" he asked. He looked at the clock in the kitchen; it was ten minutes after midnight.

  "You waiting up for me, Pops?" Marlene giggled.

  "Yeah, come over here, I want to see if I can smell alcohol on your breath," he replied, patting his lap.

  Marlene kicked off her shoes and in a few quick steps had crossed the room and was straddling him on the chair. She planted a long, warm kiss full of promises on his lips. "What do you think?" she asked.

  "Merlot…perhaps masking an earlier cabernet," he said as she snuggled against his chest. "Glad you weren't driving. So, what was the very important mystery…or do I dare ask?"

  Marlene sat up and put her arms around his neck. "Well, it was kind of a sneaky way to get me together with Robin Repass and Pam Russell," she said and waited for the reaction. She was almost disappointed that all she got was an arched brow.

  "Anyway, they wanted to ask if I would do a little digging around," she said.

  "And?"

  Marlene searched his eyes as best she could to see if he was angry. She decided that now was the time to fit as many words as she could into as small a space as possible.

  "I think there's a big injustice coming down on a lot of people, including Robin, Pam, the cops, and the victim," she said quickly. "I told them that I would consider their request, but I wanted to run it by you first."

  The last was sort of a lie. She'd pretty much agreed to their request. When her husband didn't answer, she finally asked, "Well?"

  "Well what? Since when have you listened to me?" He'd meant it as a teasing remark and immediately regretted it when she tensed up.

  "That's not true," she complained. "Yes, I do what I feel is right, and we all know that it nearly destroyed me, and nearly destroyed us. But I've always listened to you, and even when I didn't follow your advice, I knew that you were usually right. It's not fair; after all, I'm not the only one in this family who does what he thinks is right, even if it gets him in trouble."

  Karp raised his hands in mock surrender. "Hey, it's okay, I didn't mean it in a bad way," he said. "I agree it sounds like Robin and Pam are getting a bum rap."

  Marlene was surprised. He almost sounded as if he wasn't bothered by the thought of her "poking around." She decided to press her advantage. "You know, Stupe thought that maybe if you made a public statement, maybe wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times, it might counteract all the negative publicity stirred up by Hugh Louis."

  "It's not the business of the New York district attorney to be critiquing the decisions made by the Kings County district attorney," he said to see how she'd react.

  It was with anger. "What's the matter, afraid it might hurt you politically?"

  "No," he said, refusing to take the bait. "But it would be highly irregular."

  Marlene caught the tone of pseudo-pomposity. She cocked her head to see him better with her good eye. "Okay, Butch, what's up?"

  "Nothing," he said. Delighted, he received her kiss, but then she bit into his tongue and held on. "Ow…'at 'urts," he complained. "O'ay, o'ay, I'll 'ell 'ou."

  Marlene released his tongue. "Give it up, buster."

  He told her about the real reason for his meeting with the mayor and then his talk that day with Liz Tyler. "I think I'm going to take the case, but I wanted to run it past you first. You mad?"

  Marlene smiled and kissed him again. This time there were no painful bites, but he became aware of the increased pressure she was exerting from her groin to his. She reached down and began fumbling with his belt.

  "What about the twins? Lucy? John?" he asked huskily.

  "Whatsa matter Big-and I do mean BIG-Boy," she said as she unzipped his pants. "Afraid of getting caught?"

  As an answer, his hands dived beneath her sweater and turtleneck shirt and in one motion removed them all.

  "I guess not," she murmured.

  Later as they lay in bed, having decided that prudence was the better part of valor for the second round, Marlene sleepily asked if he'd found out the reason behind Jojola's unexpected visit.

  "Hmmm?" Karp mumbled. "Uh, yeah, a dream."

  "I know that," she said, nibbling on an earlobe. "What dream? Come on, tell me, I'll give you a reward."

  "Thought you already did," he said and pulled her over and onto his chest. But he started to breathe deeply, his prelude to snoring.

  "Dream," she said. "What about the dream?"

  "Noth…nothing," he said. "Impossible."

  "What's impossible? Karp, don't you go to sleep and leave me wondering all night."

  "Grale."

  Marlene tensed. Was Butch the one dreaming? "What about Grale?"

  Karp patted her on the back in the way he did when it was time for her to leave him alone and go to sleep. "John thinks he's alive."

  "What!"

  "His dream…he needs to find him, or we're all going to die. Now…time to sleep."

  "Karp?" Marlene said. "Karp, dammit." But all she got back was a deep, rumbling snore.

  13

  In another part of the city that night, Ahman Zakir caught up to "Mr. Mustafa" in the hall outside the meeting room of the mosque. "It was a warning. Someone knows your plans," he said. "I think we better call this off…tonight's event, anyway."

  "Nonsense," Al-Sistani said. "It was nothing more than stupid American racists getting even for our brothers' righteous execution of the Crusaders and their lackeys in Iraq. As if this is some tit-for-tat game of revenge. Their inability to see the, as they say, 'big picture,' is why we will win."

  Al-Sistani spoke the words with conviction. His Oxford-educated English was clipped and cultivated, his manners in polite company impeccable-on the outside, just another spoiled oil prince, perfect for a mujahideen cell leader. True, he'd initially been shocked and momentarily unnerved when he heard that his bodyguard who'd disappeared that night outside the mosque had been butchered and his head stuck on a spike in Central Park. For that one moment, he felt panic start to rise in his throat like
bile, wondering if he'd been betrayed and his plan ruined.

  However, the more he thought about it, the more he was sure that he and his men were safe. The American police and even their intelligence agencies were too weak willed, too emasculated by their politicians and civil libertarians, to make such a dramatic statement as killing a wanted terrorist and displaying his head for all to see. Maybe in Saudi Arabia but not here in America with its silly rules against torture and "cruel and unusual punishment." How could they expect to win?

  As the days passed and there were no arrests of his people and "the supplies" remained in place, he was further convinced that the bodyguard's death was not even the work of some rogue element of the New York Police Department or any agency of the American government, including the laughable Homeland Security Department.

  "Their culture of fair play dooms them," he lectured his closest aides. "They want to arrest us and put us on trial, then place us in prison, where we become the new symbols of the jihad. They do not have the testicles it will take to win this fight. In the meantime, we will slaughter them by the thousands in their homes, their stadiums, and their office buildings."

  Al-Sistani was not, therefore, surprised when someone claiming to represent "the American Aryan Jihadi" called a popular radio talk-show host and claimed responsibility. As expected, the infidel had said the killing was in retaliation "for killing white men in Iraq. So all of you fuckin' little towel heads out there, consider yourselves warned. Get the fuck out of white man's country and go back to your little piles of shit sandboxes."

  The police and district attorney's office had released a joint press statement saying they had no prior intelligence on any hate group called American Aryan Jihadi. The statement assured Muslim-Americans and Muslim visitors that every effort was being made to bring the murderer to justice. The statement also urged other citizens to "refrain from escalating tensions and unfairly singling out any one group based on events in Iraq and the Middle East."

  The American Civil Liberties Union, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Muslim-American Anti-Defamation League of New York had immediately joined in condemning the police and district attorney's office for not taking a more proactive stance. "One cannot help but think that if this had been a Christian white man," Imam Abdul Ibn Barr, head of one of the largest Muslim congregations, wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece, "or a Jew, the police response would have been much more forceful and all-encompassing. Yet, they don't even know who this poor immigrant is, or anything about him, except that he died horribly and his head was left in plain sight of where police officers supposedly walk their beats. In all likelihood, he left behind a family in some far-off land who now waits to hear from their breadwinner-a call that will never come. And all the DA and police can do is promise some future justice."

  Police chief Bill Denton, the mayor-elect's brother, got himself into hot water by angrily going on television to demand that the complaining organizations "point out the guilty man, and I'll arrest him personally." Which only resulted in another op-ed piece labeling him as "apparently too lazy to do his own work…trying to shift the blame back on the people who are trying to demand accountability from their police department."

  District Attorney Karp, a man Al-Sistani knew was an enemy to be reckoned with from his past run-ins with Islam's holy warriors, had been more circumspect. "As in all homicide cases, we are working with all due diligence to bring any and all perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice. Whatever the cause or justification, murder is murder in New York County. All perceptions to the contrary are disingenuous and without merit."

  It was almost laughable how the Americans had started backbiting. The fat lawyer Hugh Louis had taken a break from his television appearances talking about his case against the city-a case Al-Sistani had followed closely because it promised to yield more angry young black men who might become recruits-to denounce "the attack on our brown Arab brothers." Of course, Louis had used the extra television time to plug the Coney Island case, too. "The same institutionalized racism that imprisoned four innocent African-American men based on Gestapo-like police interrogation techniques is also responsible for the fact that racist murderers are roaming free, victimizing people of color."

  The city councilwoman Shakira Zulu had joined in the fray by calling a press conference to raise the ante. "Until the black man and the brown man arm themselves, they will be preyed upon by the power structure of white America. Let us not forget, the black man suffering in the ghettos of America has more in common with his Palestinian brother, who daily faces the tanks and bullets of Zionist oppression with nothing more than rocks and his blood, than he does with the white man."

  Although Al-Sistani regretted the death of the bodyguard, a well-trained man he'd known for years, the murder only played into his cause by distracting federal agents from the real danger. He wasn't worried about his man being identified, if for no other reason than after his rat-chewed body was discovered in the alley next to the mosque by a believer assigned to take out the trash, both the body and that of the believer had been taken to a landfill operated by a sympathizer and buried.

  If the Americans wanted to play tit-for-tat, well, then, he'd see how they felt after New Year's Eve. As for the others, the lawyers and the whiny activists, he cared no more for any of them than any other infidel who did not accept the Prophet as the representative of Allah and the one true faith. Even these Nation of Islam blacks would have to learn the errors of their misguided interpretations of the Quran or have their heresy cured by the sword.

  Soon they would all be trembling with fear and awe when he struck at the very heart of their loathsome city. But he would be long gone to California, where he would lie low and plan his next triumph in the name of Allah. In his dreams, he saw the Golden Gate Bridge crashing into the sea loaded with early-morning commuter traffic, and airliners falling from the sky on fire, or crashing into skyscrapers in Chicago, Seattle, and L.A.

  The stupid Americans would lash out at the next tinpot dictator, like that secular idiot Hussein, crush his army, and find itself in another quagmire where the holy warriors of Al Qaeda would flock to sow the seeds of insurrection and martyrdom. Soon enough the Americans would be abandoned by the timid Europeans, cowed like the Spanish into submission, their rail systems in shambles and their hospitals overflowing with the dead and maimed. Until at last, the United States would stand alone, ostracized by its former friends who feared retribution from their huge Muslim immigrant populations and the martyrs of Islam.

  Then, with no other country willing to be a trading partner, the economy of the United States would be crippled and its population living in terror of the next World Trade Center or, he laughed, New Year's Eve in Times Square. Thus, the most powerful nation in the world would have to sue for mercy and give itself over to Islamic law.

  Despite having spent many years among them in his youth, Al-Sistani was amazed and delighted that the Americans could not see what needed to be done to save themselves. Worried about political correctness, they allowed him and others like him to travel freely. Instead of paying close attention to young men, even women, of Arab extraction or those coming from Muslim countries, they wasted their time and resources at airports checking the bags of their grandmothers and patting down small children. It was all for show, anyway, a farcical allegory right out of their stupid children's book The Emperor Who Had No Clothes. It was all for an illusion of security when their government was too ham-strung by partisan politics to react effectively. If ever there was a plum that was ripe for the plucking, it was the God-accursed and decadent United States of America.

  When he lay in his apartment at night, this was the pleasant dream of the future he saw unfolding before him like the desert sands of Arabia. Even now, it took an effort to bring himself back into focus outside the door of the meeting room. The Islamic States of America would not be accomplished merely by dreaming. It would take hard action.

  His plan needed volunteers to
make sure that all his preparations and energy weren't wasted. There were always too few trained men for these operations, and most of those he had with him were too valuable for martyrdom. Of the dozen, now minus one, he'd had slip into the U.S. and meet up with him in New York, he planned to leave half to carry out his glorious blow against the infidels; the rest would go with him to California for the next plan. But he wanted a half-dozen more volunteers to help set up "the supplies," a dangerous job in itself, and then guard them until the moment of martyrdom was at hand.

  Ever since the destruction of the World Trade Center, Al Qaeda had redoubled its efforts to recruit American Muslims to its cause, especially from within the ranks of the more militant offshoots of groups like the Nation of Islam and the Black Muslims. Al Qaeda operatives such as himself, as well as those from affiliated organizations like Hamas, had for years been establishing contacts in sympathetic community mosques all over the United States. Not all, or even most, were welcoming-some had even betrayed the cause by reporting their activities to the police; someday they would pay a price for their treason to God. But here and there the recruiters had made inroads, especially in poor neighborhoods like this one in East Harlem, where poverty created fertile ground for spreading anti-American seeds of destruction. Waiting for the young men in the meeting room to come in and take their seats, he looked at Zakir and smiled.

  Zakir smiled back, but he was not happy. He knew that Mr. Mustafa wasn't working for any charitable organization. He didn't know precisely what the pockmarked zealot was planning, but he knew it was big and that it was going to happen on New Year's Eve. He suspected a bomb set in Times Square. Maybe, he thought with a mixture of fear and excitement, a plane out of JFK International will be hijacked to dive into the crowd. More than a hundred thousand people would be crowded into the area. The hijackers will want a plane still loaded with fuel to burn as many as possible…there'd be no escape; they'd be caught between the buildings.