The Godless One (40 page)

There was shouting in the field. Ari
wanted to shoot these men on the spot. He also wanted to embrace
them. There was no time for either.

"Remember when I scattered Abu Nidal's
guards as decoys?"

"It didn't work," Abdul Rahman smiled,
rising to his feet.

"He boasted that he was getting to know
you," Omar said, also standing. Ahmad, confused by the strange
camaraderie in the air, kept his pistol aimed at his
chest.

"Well, you're the decoys now," said
Ari. "And I hope you do a better job of it. You might not get far.
Two Arabs in a Lexus on a back road filled with
police..."

"We'll get out." Abdul Rahman gave Omar
a sharp glance. "If I drive." He held up the key.

"Then..." Ari took a deep breath. "God
go with you."

Abdul Rahman put his arms out. Ari
embraced him. It caused him pain of great variety.

"And the Boss?" Omar asked as he walked
to the car.

"Do you care? He stays with me. How did
you end up staying with that pig, anyway?"

"Oh, that?" Assuming Ari could see him
with his night goggles, he held up his left hand. One finger was
missing. "He swore this was what would happen to the heads of my
wife and children if I didn't come as his...assistant."

Ahmad gasped in horror. Ari turned to
Abdul Rahman.

"You too?"

"Shot it off," said his old corporal,
who did not bother to demonstrate the evidence. The voices in the
field drew closer. Abdul Rahman gave a light rap on the hood of the
Lexus. "If we're going to do any good, get in now!"

Omar jumped into the car while Abdul
Rahman took the wheel. The engine purred to life. Ari doubted
anyone in the field could hear it. As it backed up the lane, Ari
and Ahmad gathered up the guns and equipment and lumbered towards
the main fire road. By the time they reached it the Lexus was
already halfway to Sugar Loaf Road. Abdul Rahman was forced to turn
on his parking lights to avoid the deep ruts to either side. Yellow
rays filtered and faded through the trees, like vanishing
fairies.

When Ari swung open the Sprinter door
he found Abu Jasim pressing his back against the bench, facing his
prisoner, his face pinched with dread.

"It’s him! It’s Uday!"

"And you’re the one with
the gun," Ari said calmly as he placed the shotguns, pistols and
goggles on the floor of the van. The prisoner was busily tucking
his shirt back in after Abu Jasim had pulled it out to see
non-existent scars, thus proving he was Uday’s
fatid
and not Uday himself. Only he
had discovered scars…plenty of them.

"Hello, Bucktooth," Ari
said convivially. "Want those teeth straightened?" When Uday’s
flicked his eyes at the guns near his feet, Ari pointed at him,
pointed at the guns, then pointed back at him, and said,
"
Bam
."

"Colonel, don’t—"

"Make him mad?" Ari stepped up into the
van, worked his way around the pile on the floor, and gave Uday a
kick in the leg. Uday hissed in pain. "Still sore? Move over,
you’re crowding me."

"If you kill him, we’ll be hunted the
rest of our lives."

"Get up front and drive.
We have to leave,
now
."

Abu Jasim could see plainly that if he
did not drive his nephew would have to take the wheel. But he would
not turn his back on Uday Hussein with a weakened Ari as his only
safeguard—Ari, gasping, had just about shot his bolt for the
evening. He stood, lifted the bench top, and brought out two sets
of handcuffs. When Uday began to resist, Ari took out from his coat
pocket something that resembled an electric shaver.

"I’m sure you know what this is," he
said, holding up the Taser. "You probably have a few in your toy
chest."

Uday sat back, resorting to passive
resistance when Abu Jasim manipulated his limbs. "What, you want to
tie me down so you can fuck me?" Uday watched Ari pocket the Taser.
"I’ll get loose. Your servant can’t do anything right. He’s the one
that led me to you."

"I’m nobody’s servant!" Abu Jasim
shouted into his face.

"Then stop cringing like one!" Ari
snapped. "Uday’s a buffoon with a long sordid past. He’s a nobody.
Treat him as such."

But Abu Jasim was offended. He finished
cuffing Uday’s wrists and ankles in grim silence.

"I think I see lights!" Ahmad cried out
from the passenger seat. "Do you want me to drive?"

"No!" Abu Jasim scrambled up to the
driver seat. Ahmad gave the two bound, shivering guards a small
apologetic wave as his uncle hit the gas, for once heedless of the
destructive terrain. He headed away from Sugar Loaf Road. "What are
you doing?" he yelled frantically when Ahmad reached for the van
console.

"Just giving us some heat, OK? I’m in
the same van as Saddam Hussein and his son—that's how it looks. I
freeze just thinking about it. I don’t want to freeze for real,
too."

Uday released a harsh
laugh. "
I’m
the
buffoon?"

Ari shifted to the bench opposite Uday
and removed his ski mask. Uday offered an indifferent twitch of his
bushy eyebrows, telling Ari he had known all along who was
underneath.

"Got the shit beat out of you, didn’t
you?" he commented on seeing Ari’s bruises. "I guess your being
here means Frank Drebin is tits up somewhere."

So the would-be assassin had given Uday
the same name he had given to Mustafa Zewail and Benjy Cosmos. Ari
still did not know what the joke was about. More intriguing was the
‘tits up’ for ‘dead’, a phrase often employed by infantry in Iraq.
How many G.I.’s did Uday know? Were the ones in his circle also in
his hire, or someone else’s?

Both Ari and Uday bounced up and down
on the benches as Abu Jasim pounded over some ruts in the dirt
road. It was as if they were on an amusement ride. After checking
to make sure no one was behind them, he stopped. He and Ahmad got
out to remove the stolen tags and replace them with the originals.
Ahmad claimed there was an animal watching him from the
woods.

"You might as well let me go, now,"
said Uday, bracing his feet on the floor as the van forged ahead.
"I have friends who will come looking for me."

"ISAF?" Ari shrugged. "Should I care?
They're my friends, too."

"I should have known you would sell
yourself to the devils," Uday said, drawing up his chin.

"And how do you earn your keep?" Ari
finally gave the man more than a cursory inspection. Uday had put
on a little weight and his hair was peppered, but overall he was as
fit and trim as a man who had been shot multiple times could be.
His bushy eyebrows curled up, his teeth curled out, his limp was in
place. "Bet you got a kick out of seeing your father hanged. I
thought it was very tastefully done."

Saddam Hussein, bellowing at the top of
his voice as he was dragged under the noose, the camera on him the
whole way.

"It was grotesque." Uday's eyes blazed.
"He was a head of state. It was an assassination. If I had known
they were going to do that to him, I would never have come
here."

Ari looked at his watch. He had about
fifteen minutes left.

"How did you find out about me?" he
asked Uday.

"Your idiot servant, of
course," Uday sneered. "He was spotted the night Detective
Carrington was killed. Fatimah, this girl at the Stop-N in
Cumberland, she called us with the license plate number. We called
Quebec, said some fool with one of their plates had hit us and we
needed to file a claim. They wouldn't give us his address at first,
but then we found a nice sympathetic girl who helped us. When one
of my people saw that it was my father's old
fatid
, I began to suspect...well,
not you, maybe, but I guessed he was visiting someone from the old
days. Carrington had told me some guy named Ari Ciminon was giving
him a hard time. I asked for Ciminon's address, but he said he
would take care of him...you...himself. Now, there was no reason
why 'Abu Jasim' would come all the way from Montreal to bump off an
American cop unless he was lending a helping hand to someone who
needed it. The two of you turned the tables on him...saving me the
job, by the way."

"You were going to kill him because he
lost the Kayak Express?"

"And he made me nervous..." Uday sent a
scowl across the van. He did not like people who made him
nervous.

"With good reason. He was going to kill
me and plant my body on your property. An anonymous call to the
police, an investigation, and you would have been exposed. When did
you start dealing in drugs?"

"The Americans are cheap," Uday
shrugged. "I needed something to do. I had contacts in the
States—"

"The old ANO boys."

"They weren't doing much of anything,
and they've always been a greedy bunch."

"So you needed money for your toys,
like a Lamborghini. You couldn't buy it legally without leaving a
paper trail. You contacted Naji Turabi in Maryland so he could
boost one for you."

"And that motherprick
Samir Salman got caught before I could even
see
it!" It was obvious this was a
sore on Uday's heart. He leaned forward, as if jabbed by a
poker.

"You wanted someone to punish, but you
couldn't get to him in prison. So you went after the
translator."

"Samir Salman was a complete idiot! He
was a believer! Mustafa convinced him he was as holy as Abdulla
al-Mahdi Billah, and the fool spilled his guts to him."

"You found out what was going on
through Sid Overstreet’s contact in the prison. You used that same
contact to tell Samir Salman that he was betraying secrets to the
infidels and to shut his mouth. Mmmm…how did you manage to convince
Samir that stealing a Lamborghini was holy?"

It was a frivolous question. History
was replete with holy thievery, so it wasn’t important. Besides,
the answer was self-evident: Samir Salman was an idiot.

"So you paid Mustafa a
visit."

"I wasn't planning on
killing him—believe that or not, as you will. Just scare him off
from telling anyone about what he had heard from Samir Salman."
Uday performed a
que sera, sera
shrug. "I thought just one look at me would
impress him enough to back off. But the man peed in his pants! He
wasn't Egyptian. He was Iraqi! He knew me too well!" He caught Abu
Jasim looking at him in the rearview mirror. "You must be wearing
your diapers!"

"You tortured Mustafa," Ari
prodded.

"We bumped him around a little...and he
told us he was working for the American anti-drug people. How was I
to know he had no clue about my little sideline? I had to assume he
acted as a translator at the prison to get information about me,
that he couldn't care less about a peewee like Samir Salman. I
couldn't take the chance. He tried to bribe me...$10,000! I make
more than that in a single afternoon! But he had to go."

"And you wanted to send a
message."

"The people here shit in their drawers
when they hear about a beheading. Just the kind of message I wanted
to send, let the neighbors from the homeland know they'd better not
fuck with what wasn't their concern. My local boys were a little
squeamish about it. I had to shoot the woman myself, and it was
hard for me, getting up those stairs when she ran off. And then I
hear a 'pop' downstairs—the idiots shot Mustafa! Turned my powerful
shit into diarrhea. I wouldn't have it. Off goes the head! They
took their time about it."

"Frank and Sid."

"Like boys playing doctor. It was their
punishment for making me climb the stairs. Sid almost puked. Tough
guys..." Uday shook his head in disgust.

"You wrote the verse on the
wall."

"Well,
they
couldn't do it!"

"You wouldn't let them take the
money."

"They bitched about it, but I wanted
people to know we couldn't be bought. Not that way."

"You found a brochure with the names of
Mustafa Zewail and Ari Ciminon."

"And I wondered, is this Ciminon guy
with the anti-drug people, too?" He eyed Ari narrowly. "Are
you?"

"Your friends in Longueil planted the
GPS in the Astrovan."

"I knew how close you two were. After
all, you helped him escape from the Imperial Palace. You thought I
didn't know? I didn't, until it was too late. All those years ago,
you were only a private."

"I was a corporal by then."

"You had access to certain
doors. You arranged the escape car. You had his papers fixed, you
arranged his flight out of the country—First Class! His entire
family! My father was crazy with anger. His best
fatid
gone! The one who
could make the Congress sit up and listen!" He turned to the front
of the van. "What wasn't there to like about that job?"

"He wanted me to look the
same as him when
naked
," Abu Jasim snarled at the windshield. "I didn't want to
shorten anything."