Jihadi (45 page)

She went just after nightfall, her face covered. Sidestepped down the hillside, the least evident route. Slipped through a narrow, but adequate, hole in the untended chain-link fence, a gap she had identified from a distance that afternoon. Entered the little shack, which was unlocked and unguarded. The entire base seemed, and indeed was, close to empty, most of its occupants having been assigned to deal with civil unrest, which had broken out once again in the city.

He was not dead, or anything close to it, when she found him sprawled face-down on the floor. He was semi-conscious, a circumstance that suited the purpose and made the pistol she was carrying unnecessary.

The name on the dogtag: MAZZONI MICHAEL R.

She knelt down, inspected him closely, took his wrist, let it go. The pulse was steady, the face that of the criminal she had seen walking from the house. The position of the body was not optimal, so she stood and straightened the arms with firm movements of her right foot.

After these repositionings, she knelt down again and loosened the man’s shirt, the better to expose the neck.

Her hand brushed against his cheek and ear as she did this.

Face down, he stirred at the unexpected tenderness of that touch, the apparent compassion of it, twisted his prone head to one side and then the other, opened an eye, and mumbled a single word: ‘Bitch.’

His palms went to just below his shoulders, as though he were preparing to do a push-up.

She stood quickly. Instinct said
now
.

A critical concern in any beheading is the sharpness of the blade. A weak, dull blade causes undue pain in the criminal and virtually ensures the necessity of multiple strikes, both of which are violations of the Sunnah of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.

Fatima had sharpened her blade that afternoon.

On the other side of the world, as you slowed your green Siena to manoeuvre your way out of the passing lane where you knew you did not belong, there came a twinge in your chest that signalled full complicity. And you felt, to your relief, fine with that twinge.

When the two most recent Heroes of the Week found his cot empty, when they came to the Wreck Room to investigate, when they saw the small, quivering figure backing away from the flow, they didn’t notice the machete.

They assumed her shuddering was the shuddering of trauma, thought she was a fearful teenaged girl unused to the sight of blood. They were wrong. It was not that kind of shuddering.

They found the machete in a far corner of the room. It was in its green canvas case, but it bore red streaks when one withdrew it.

Standing room only. The bright hall was packed. You showed up at the last possible moment.

Dad, although dead, had old friends in the Secret Service. He had placed you on some special list. You waited in the wings. The speaker scheduled right before you, a Ph.D. from Harvard, was concluding some remarks that established the moral superiority of drone warfare over all previous military technology.

UVAs, it turned out, were more flexible. They were safer. They were more precise. They had the potential to substantially reduce civilian casualties, though they did carry certain public relations risks. And so forth. When the Ph.D. finished, with a flourish, on the word ‘freedom’, the Important People at the banquet applauded until the stage was empty. It remained empty for a time.

As you took your place at the rostrum, the commander-in-chief, who had apparently been briefed on your status as a returning hero, stood up bravely and clapped loud, beginning a personal standing ovation that was dutifully imitated by everyone else in the room.

‘So,’ you began, keeping your tones slow and measured. ‘So. We have a big problem with terrorism, and we mustn’t be afraid to say that much right out loud.’

There was another slow swelling of applause. The idea of getting up and starting a whole new standing ovation, even though one had just finished, might have started at the front of the room, at the commander-in-chief’s table, but it was hard to tell. Wherever it began, everyone was soon standing again.

‘Yeah,’ the dead and guilty guy you had become said. ‘Yeah. Thank you.’

You waited until things quieted down.

‘So. There’s a news story that’s just breaking. I didn’t break it. It broke itself. Probably the Defenders of God broke it. Anyway, you’re all going to read about it, hear about it, see videos about it on all the various internets.’

The commander-in-chief’s face went a little sour for a microsecond, then returned to its ‘smile’ setting.

‘So. This story’s going to be about a marine who snapped. He snapped all the way over there in the Islamic Republic. Where I was. He did something terrible. It’s going to be big, this story. Lots of people will tell it. I can guarantee you one thing about this story. Most of the versions we hear are going to use the word “tragedy”.’

There was a rustling at the edges of the great hall, just beyond your field of vision, as though, to the far right of you and the far left of you, barely seen men were receiving instructions from their earpieces, and preparing to position themselves.

‘So. When we hear that word “tragedy”, and repeat it over and over again, most of us are going to file this episode in the exact same place we file stories about bus accidents when the brakes go out. As just one of those terrible things that happen. That’s what we’ve convinced ourselves tragedy means. Random awfulness that happens to be extremely severe. But that’s not what a tragedy is.’

The palms of your hands, which had been pressed against the sides of the podium as though it were about to fly away, fell to the sides of your body.

‘So. Tragedy is not a snapped brake cable that no one could have foreseen. Tragedy means someone makes a mistake, and then comes to regret that mistake from the soul and pays for that mistake in a painful way, a way that everyone else can learn from. That way the mistake doesn’t repeat.’

Another silence passed. A stirring at the table of the commander-in-chief suggested low, ongoing conversation.

‘So. I suppose you want to know how I feel about terrorism. I’m a terrorist. I shot a little girl while I was over there. Shot her dad, too. Shot them dead.’

There was a gasp from one of the tables. You tried to make eye contact with someone in the audience – anybody would do – but the lights made this all but impossible. Behind the commander-in-chief’s table, there were only dark silhouettes of bodies, male and female, seated and standing, in the shape of suits. No faces.

‘So. We’re all going to say that was a tragedy. What a tragedy it was, those dead people over there. In that faraway place. And we’re going to use that word “tragedy” like a kind of shield. But the point is, it shouldn’t have happened.’

All still and soundless. Your stance still straight. Your hands by your sides.

‘So now we’re all out to make this look like some kind of bus accident I was in. That’s what we’re doing here tonight, really. Fast-forwarding over what I did. What he did. And I think maybe we’re all just a little ill. Mentally ill, I mean. Everyone in this room. Because these are actual mistakes we made, and most of us can’t see or feel that yet. Can’t even bring ourselves to say what happened clearly.’

This remark caused heads to lean to the left and to the right, and to whisper, at the table of the commander-in-chief.

‘Personally, I think we all went too damn fast for our own good for a while. I think we all just need to slow down.’

You took a drink from a glass of water that had been placed at the podium for you. You replaced the glass with care. The water within the glass made little ripples consistent with its having been set down.

‘So. What do I think about terrorism? Terrorism is killing civilians, on purpose, in order to fulfill a political agenda. Like installing a theocracy. That’s a political agenda. Or defeating an insurgency. That’s a political agenda, too. And I think terrorism has to stop, and it’s not going to stop as long as we are so ill we don’t even realize what we’re doing. We’re lost. And I think if we don’t slow down, we’re looking at nothing but war, all of us, for a very long time to come.’

The commander-in-chief put a closed fist to his mouth, cleared his throat and looked around the room.

‘Nothing but war,’ you repeated.

Every light in the hall came on. An extended, piercing two-note squeal assaulted the banquet room, then repeated itself, and repeated itself, and repeated itself, and gave no sign of ever wanting to stop. Someone had set off a fire alarm.

‘Please clear the hall in an orderly manner,’ an invisible man’s bass voice ordered. Chairs and tables made scraping noises. Above those noises, the endless two-note shriek continued.

The commander-in-chief allowed himself to be ushered from his table. Others followed his lead. A steady stream of well-dressed people marched toward the exits, which were brightly marked. Most of the people walking away from you had their hands over their ears.

‘So. It’s not like we’ve never
been
lost,’ you continued. ‘We get lost all the time. Slavery. Interning the Japanese. Charging people money at the polls to keep them from voting. What do we always do fifty years after we screw up like that?’

A silent wall of suits assumed its formation against the back wall. Before he exited, the commander-in-chief looked back over his shoulder and made a gesture toward someone standing in that line. Then the commander-in-chief was gone, an index finger in each ear.

‘So. Fifty years later, we look back and we say, “Was that us? Did we do that? Did we buy and sell people? That wasn’t America. Not really.” But it was. It was us screwing up. “Sorry.” Well. If the “sorry” is real, if it hurts, fine. But we’re not sorry about this yet. This should hurt a little more than it does.’

The two-note siren’s onslaught continued. It made your ears throb. Fleeing it, half the attendees had already made their way through the exits, and the other half were on their way out, their hands clapped to the sides of their heads.

One of the black suits mouthed an unhearable phrase and pointed directly toward the stage. The mike cut off with a pop.

‘Having wiped out three thousand civilians with flying killer
robots,’ you went on, ‘have we got more terrorists to worry about? Or fewer? More suicide bombings? Or fewer? Is what we’re doing really protecting the people we love? Or is it driving them insane? It’s not working. We have to go back to an empty space. To nothing. From nothing, who we are is the possibility of justice.’

The siren grew louder, which you didn’t think was possible. The man in the darkest grey suit approached the stage.

You leaned into the podium and shouted your final question toward the back of the hall.

‘Will one of you please take care of my wife?’

There were only men in dark suits in the hall now. One of them came up from behind you, assumed ownership of your right arm, twisted it behind your back and hustled you off the podium. When you got offstage, Dick Unferth was waiting for you there in the wings. Dick nodded to the man in grey, a black hood swept over your head and you heard a voice that definitely belonged to your wife say:

‘We are quite capable of taking care of ourselves.’

It has been one of the questions on your mind – you know you are not the first to ask this – whether or not the universe is a moral place.

Even though no one chose to hear your final questions, even though you are not certain anyone will ever read this, even though you will die here, you are inclined to believe, with the preachers, that it is, and that it simply has a very long arc, an arc that tends toward justice. That there is something that lasts. That what matters – you have no idea how, but you sense that it matters deeply – is whether one makes an effort along such an arc.

Your death is likely to come at your wife’s hands, probably within the next session or two. She keeps asking you the same questions: Was any recording made of her final discussion with Dad? (Yes.) Who received it? (You didn’t give it to anyone. You destroyed the
thumb drive.) Who received it? (No one.) But who received it? A name, please. (No one.) Where is Adelia? (You don’t know. You’re glad you don’t know where Adelia is.)

These answers she finds unpersuasive. You’ve accepted that. You’re getting out of here, though. You’re going home.

Last time you checked, the Islamic Republic had achieved, not democracy, not theocracy, not secular dictatorship, but the cursed state of wavering forever among these three possibilities.

Fatima (the gossip says) ended up in a maximum security prison somewhere in the States. In addition to convicting her of killing Mike Mazzoni, which she did, they convicted her of firing an anti-aircraft missile at an American plane, which she didn’t.

They didn’t have to convict you of anything. They just disappeared you. They do things like that now.

They took your Koran away last week. Without it, you turn mentally to some verses you have already memorized, and you get ready to leave this place. These days, you turn to chapter one hundred of this book you have written, this book of struggle and striving, which you hope Becky gets to read carefully one of these days. You read chapter one hundred a lot.

You have a nickname for Becky now. It’s a loving nickname, the name of the first wife of the Prophet of Islam. The only woman he loved, as long as she lived. The woman he thought he was going to spend his life with. The woman who took care of him when his life seemed to be falling apart. The woman who strove with him during his darkest days. The woman who made his life’s work possible.

Some might expect you to be angry at Becky, but the only emotions you feel for her now arise from the spectrum of sorrow: countless shades of regretful blue on the wing of a butterfly, blues for the loss of a love that you cannot now describe. You wrote this book for her. Perhaps someone in the Directorate will read it, and having read it, decide it’s time to take care of Becky now.

Even here, in the Beige Motel, you never forgot her many moments of patience and compassion with you, never really stopped
loving her. This is a love story. Your mouth bleeds red and your heart aches white, until you think of her awakening to herself, shaking free of her chrysalis, guided by the light of a glow from neither the east nor the west, greeting you in Paradise.