The Godless One (8 page)

Night Stalkers Don’t
Quit
. Motto for the
160
^th
Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

DEVGRU. Acronym for the Naval Special
Warfare Development Group, and which Ari could plainly see was
referring to Seal Team Six.

Had they realized that he comprehended
these references and could make uncanny inroads into American
strategy, they would have taken their job more
seriously.

When he first arrived, Ari would make
morbid quips about the terrorists that he recognized in the
pictures. These were like comic mnemonics that booted his mental
database. He used to pass along some of these self-addressed
comments in his email reports. CENTCOM did not admonish him,
because it did not want to alienate him—not only because ‘Mr.
Ibrahim’ had been, over a two year period, in charge of the
registry clerks at Abu Ghraib Prison…but also because Ari had a
phenomenal memory for faces. It was not perfectly eidetic—even if
such a thing existed, it was so rare as to verge on the
non-existent. And Ari’s memory could be woefully inconsistent. He
had tried to recall some of his favorite recipes, but the
ingredients were churned into nonsense in his mind and ghastly
messes on his plate.

But he could not have forgotten the
faces of the men whose records he saw even had he wanted to. This
was part of the reason why he no longer made jokes about the
killers he was identifying. They had all merged into a single
expression: the tedium of death.

He wondered how the Americans would
react if they found out that he had also occasionally worked in the
SSO’s Security Office in the Hai Al Tashriya district…right next to
the Director General’s Office. This organization was in charge of
producing ID’s for the entire SSO, including the prisons and the
security department. And this was where, just prior to the 2003
war, he had prudently removed all records and references to
himself.

There were 231 pictures on this
particular Aegis. Many, snapped by U.S. troops, were of dead men
sprawled in ditches, on roads, in village courtyards, in bedrooms,
on mountainsides, in lavatories, in mosques, in apricot groves, in
lumber yards, in wheat fields, on rooftops, in basements, in
rivers, in forests and even in the Green Zone. These pictures were
useful because Ari could sometimes identify the bodies, which was
only a short step away from fingering those who might have wanted
the victims dead, which was only another short step away from
making them dead, too, either via Special Ops or American-hired
assassins.

By noon Ari had only reached Digital
Image No. 48. He was able to email tentative ID’s on four Kurds
located in what must have been the Zagros Mountains. It was Ari’s
guess that they were losers in a high-stakes smuggling game. For
all he knew, these bodies could be in Iran. He wouldn’t put it past
the Americans to try and get more bang for the buck by sending him
images from beyond the agreed limit. He could not be certain of the
victims’ identities because they all had been beheaded and their
physiognomy was distorted.

His back was tired. He did not feel
particularly hungry. He was determined not to drink. What was
left?

He put on the jogging outfit he had
purchased from Sports Zone. His official budget was limited to
hand-to-mouth, but his cash flow had improved when he robbed the
Kayak Express of every nickel and dime (in both senses) in their
immediate possession. He had also relieved them of various
firearms, some of which were hidden in his gazebo, the rest of
which he had sent off with Abu Jasim to barter away up north, along
with the Express’s supply of drugs. Abu Jasim would return as soon
as Ari contacted him. With his share in the profits, he might begin
shopping for some proper clothes, perhaps even a bed.

He was around ten minutes into his run
when he realized he had not looked at his watch when he left. This
did not put him out. He was more concerned with simply reaching his
destination. Timing the run would come when he proved he could
survive it. This began to seem doubtful by the time he reached
Belvedere. He was gasping so hard his spine banged his chest. He
could see his second wind just ahead, but every time he neared it
it spun away like a wraith of oxygen. Yet he stumbled onward,
drawing concerned glances from younger joggers, who accumulated in
growing numbers as he neared the floodwall. A girl sheathed in
spandex came up beside him, easily keeping pace as her blonde
ponytail bobbed around her shoulders.

"You all right, sir?" she asked without
effort.

He nodded even as he silently begged
her to carry him home. She shot ahead.

How could he decay so quickly? It had
not been three weeks since he last ran this course. But the answer
was obvious. Too many Winstons, far too much JD and a general
lassitude that robbed him of all energy.

Rana
, he thought as he approached the Manchester Docks. Well,
wasn’t that what one did as death drew near? Think of one’s
beloved?

He dropped to his knees before a large
pile of concrete rubble at the back of the Slave Trail parking lot.
The world crumbled as his heart tried to escape the chaos of his
body. Why had he pushed himself so hard? But wasn’t that his habit?
To exceed tolerances? To shove limits aside? He would have to give
more thought to this…if he lived five minutes more.

Without realizing it he had rolled over
on his back. Five minutes later, still alive, he turned on his side
and found himself facing an enormous congregation of
cats.

"Sphinx?" he said, thinking his
condition was multiplying his vision. Then he noticed a very wide
spectrum of colors and sat up. The cats were staring back at him.
They were sitting on the pile of concrete rubble.

"Please don’t report me…"

Ari jerked around. A woman wearing a
loose blouse and a skirt that was the worse for wear was staring at
him. She was holding onto the handle of a two-wheel shopping cart
and in the cart was a bag of Purina cat food.

"The poor things don’t have anyone to
take care of them but the city hates me and even arrested me once
and I don’t know what to do but I keep feeding them
anyway—"

Ari stopped her with a raised hand,
palm down. He nodded at the broken concrete. "What is it? Why are
they here?"

"It’s a cat colony."

Ari conjured up an image of the
colonies the ancient Greeks had established in Persia.

"They’re feral," the woman continued in
a raspy voice. "They were abandoned long ago, and now they’ve gone
back to nature."

"I’ve been here before and have never
seen them," he said.

"They’re around, but they all collect
here when it’s feeding time." With that, the woman scooped out a
handful of chow and tossed it towards the concrete. The cats
scrambled eagerly forward.

"Do you think…would they…" Painfully,
Ari pushed himself to his feet and staggered towards the frenzy.
The cats stopped eating and watched him. Ari paused.

"The city says they breed,
and that’s true, but I can’t afford to have
all
of them fixed."

"Fixed?" Ari asked. It sounded
ominous.

"You know, neutered. They remove their
little daddy- and mommy-makers."

Ari got the point. He was saddened, but
he supposed it was necessary.

"You see those with bent ears? The vet
does that once he fixes them and gives them rabies shots. But there
are so many…"

Ari stroked his ear. "Do you think…?"
He took another step towards the cats and they retreated a little
more. Ari had seen plenty of strays in his day, but never a
collective like this. He risked another step and the cats took
flight, disappearing into the rubble like fish into
coral.

"They’re feral," the woman repeated.
"One or two let you get close, but the rest just whisk away. I have
to trap them to take them to the litter prevention people. If you
want one of them as a pet, get ready for trouble."

Wasn’t that the way of the world? Ari
thought as he alternately jogged and walked home. The haves
complacent but defensive, the have-nots watching from the fringe,
waiting. Sphinx had not known how lucky he was. Ari suddenly
understood the phrase ‘fat cat’.

Approaching his house, he saw two men
coming up Beach Court Lane. One of them was his neighbor, Howie
Nottoway. The other was a cleric; a white collar peeped up from his
coat. The two smiled, but looked concerned. If Ari had looked
woeful before, his jagged jog had turned him into a
wreck.

"Ari, this is Pastor Grainger," said
Howie. "From my church."

Grainger extended his hand and Ari took
it. Firmness grasped firmness.

"How do you do, Pastor?" Ari
chattered.

"You’d better get inside," the pastor
said with a mellow note of solicitude. "It’s freezing out here, and
you’re sweating."

Ari acknowledged the need to follow
this advice and invited them to follow him inside.

"Thank you," Grainger nodded agreeably.
"We were hoping to talk to you."

The interior of the house
smelled of jasmine. After cleaning up Sphinx’s mess (and throwing
out the kitty litter box and its contents
in toto
), he had started a scented
candle to combat the smell and forgotten all about it. The result
was a large yellow mass on the kitchen counter, where the candle
had guttered.

He showed the visitors to the kitchen
and the two chairs at the table, the only furniture downstairs. He
told them he would be back in a moment, then staggered upstairs.
After toweling himself off in the bathroom, he sat on the toilet
seat and assembled his thoughts—or rather, reassembled his ability
to assemble thoughts. He stood and looked in the mirror.

This would not do. It was rude to make
guests wait, but ruder still to make them sit across from an
unshaven, unwashed man verging on middle age. And who, to these
virtuous white men, undoubtedly already looked a bit grimy by
virtue of his skin tone.

Standing in the shower, running a razor
over his face as the hot water sizzled on his skin, he wondered if
Howie was enjoying this moment under his roof. Ever since Detective
Carrington had forced him to break into Ari’s house in search for
the cocaine stash, he had betrayed a steady level of uneasiness.
Did Ari know what he had done? If so, did he understand why? They
never discussed it, and Ari had no qualms about maintaining his
uncertainty. Howie was the founder of the local Neighborhood Watch,
and he had been dancing the B&E with his closest neighbor. Ari
leveraged Howie’s sense of guilt into mild favors: the use of a
tool here, a place on the Neighborhood Watch there, tolerance for
the loud parties at the Mackenzies—which Ari invariably attended
because they offered proximity to Tracy Mackenzie, a Middle Eastern
man’s dream of an American sexpot. Morally speaking, Ari felt he
owed Howie something in return for this unspoken blackmail. But
that would not include joining the Methodist Church. Ari geared
himself up to politely decline an offer of baptism.

Returning to the kitchen, he found
Howie busily scraping the melted candle wax off his
counter.

"That was kind of dangerous, you know,
letting it burn down all the way like that."

"Please…" Ari began.

"No problem." Howie waved him off with
a cringe. He was using a butter knife so as not to scratch the
counter’s acrylic surface. Grainger looked on with bemusement, as
if wondering if Howie was taking neighborly love a touch too far.
But Ari was starting to think he might be able to finesse Howie’s
guilt into work on the house. The lawn was already seen to: the
federal authorities used a mock lawn service company to disguise
some of their visits. Ari hoped he would be gone by next Spring,
when Ted’s Lawn Service would return—although Deputy Fred Donzetti,
who ran the bogus company, promised prompt snow removal in case
Richmond suffered one of its rare blizzards.

Ari leaned against the refrigerator
while Howie swept wax fragments into his palm and deposited them in
the trash.

"I can’t come into this house without
thinking of its previous occupants," said Pastor Grainger with an
appropriate dosage of melancholia.

Ari and Howie relinquished comments for
polite nods.

"They were members of my church, you
know…Jerry and Moria. Well, not so much Jerry…but they were both
excellent members of the community."

Ari thought this was a pretty sterile
judgment on the Riggins family, but only nodded again.

"You like exercise, Mr. Ciminon?"
Grainger asked suddenly, pleasantly.

"Ari, please. And please remove your
coat. You must be very hot."

The pastor stood and removed his coat,
revealing his clergy shirt and tab collar, and draped it over the
back of the chair. He looked very fit. Ari sized him up as a cross
between a ballet dancer and a bantamweight.

"There," said Howie as he finished with
the candle. With a slope of his hand, he directed Ari to a
chair.

Ari returned the gesture. "No,
please…"