Whitewash (14 page)

Washington, D.C.

Abda decided to park his cab several blocks from his destination. No use drawing attention to it. He spit out the last of the sunflower shells into the palm of his hand, opened the window and tossed them out. He gathered everything he needed, pulled on his baseball cap and headed to the restaurant on foot.

It was crowded as usual, but they were already waiting for him in their corner booth. Abda slid in beside Khaled and said nothing. Qasim looked ridiculous in what Abda recognized as a designer T-shirt. He wanted to point at the embroidered emblem and reprimand his friend for wearing such a thing. But he knew this was what Qasim needed to do to fit in.

The waitress named Rita brought him coffee and remembered the extra cream without him asking for it. She had served them many times. She believed they were students and had even helped Qasim with his make-believe American literature class. He still carried the thick book. It sat on top of a notebook in its usual place beside his coffee cup. Pieces of paper stuck out from the pages as if marking passages.

Qasim played his role a bit too seriously, and sometimes Abda worried there would come a time when it was no longer a role. Was it possible Qasim would forget? Abda had always believed he needed to worry more about Khaled, the quiet intellect, whose eyes—never his voice—often challenged Abda’s dedication to doing everything and anything that was necessary. Abda knew Khaled thought himself better able to lead and more committed to their cause. But there could be only one man in charge and they could not afford the luxuries of jealousy, resentment or distrust. Khaled knew this and he would never put his own personal beliefs above or before the mission. This idea that an individual could come before his nation was a frivolous, selfish, Western concept. Abda hoped that Qasim also remembered this as he enjoyed wearing bright-colored clothes with ridiculous brand-name logos and even more ridiculous price tags.

They ordered sandwiches and as soon as the waitress left them Abda brought out a calculus textbook from his backpack. From between the pages he slid the envelope with the now-broken wax seal. He carefully withdrew a single sheet of paper and unfolded it in the middle of the table. The three of them huddled around it as if it were some sacred text. Qasim took out a pen and opened his notebook, pretending to take notes, continuing to play out his charade as a student.

The diagram had been sketched on plain white paper that looked unremarkable at first glance. In truth, when Abda first opened the envelope left on the backseat of his cab and found only this diagram with its odd penciled-in codes, he felt the air leave his lungs. He thought for certain he had been duped. That suddenly the transfer of information had stopped and in its place was some penciled hoax.

Now as he watched his friends stare at the sketches on the paper he realized their confusion.

He pointed to a rectangle drawn at the top. “The head table.” His finger slid down to several circles, tapping one at a time as he whispered, “The delegates from Europe, the representatives from American oil companies, members of Congress.”

Abda saw their eyes go from confusion to realization to excitement as they, too, started to see the meaning of the codes.

“The banquet?” Khaled said softly and Abda could see him restraining a smile.

Abda took Qasim’s pen and circled several of the penciled-in codes of two to three letters, sometimes with a number.

“It is not only every table arrangement, but every seat assignment,” he told them. “We now know exactly where our target will be seated.”

Washington, D.C.

Abda decided to park his cab several blocks from his destination. No use drawing attention to it. He spit out the last of the sunflower shells into the palm of his hand, opened the window and tossed them out. He gathered everything he needed, pulled on his baseball cap and headed to the restaurant on foot.

It was crowded as usual, but they were already waiting for him in their corner booth. Abda slid in beside Khaled and said nothing. Qasim looked ridiculous in what Abda recognized as a designer T-shirt. He wanted to point at the embroidered emblem and reprimand his friend for wearing such a thing. But he knew this was what Qasim needed to do to fit in.

The waitress named Rita brought him coffee and remembered the extra cream without him asking for it. She had served them many times. She believed they were students and had even helped Qasim with his make-believe American literature class. He still carried the thick book. It sat on top of a notebook in its usual place beside his coffee cup. Pieces of paper stuck out from the pages as if marking passages.

Qasim played his role a bit too seriously, and sometimes Abda worried there would come a time when it was no longer a role. Was it possible Qasim would forget? Abda had always believed he needed to worry more about Khaled, the quiet intellect, whose eyes—never his voice—often challenged Abda’s dedication to doing everything and anything that was necessary. Abda knew Khaled thought himself better able to lead and more committed to their cause. But there could be only one man in charge and they could not afford the luxuries of jealousy, resentment or distrust. Khaled knew this and he would never put his own personal beliefs above or before the mission. This idea that an individual could come before his nation was a frivolous, selfish, Western concept. Abda hoped that Qasim also remembered this as he enjoyed wearing bright-colored clothes with ridiculous brand-name logos and even more ridiculous price tags.

They ordered sandwiches and as soon as the waitress left them Abda brought out a calculus textbook from his backpack. From between the pages he slid the envelope with the now-broken wax seal. He carefully withdrew a single sheet of paper and unfolded it in the middle of the table. The three of them huddled around it as if it were some sacred text. Qasim took out a pen and opened his notebook, pretending to take notes, continuing to play out his charade as a student.

The diagram had been sketched on plain white paper that looked unremarkable at first glance. In truth, when Abda first opened the envelope left on the backseat of his cab and found only this diagram with its odd penciled-in codes, he felt the air leave his lungs. He thought for certain he had been duped. That suddenly the transfer of information had stopped and in its place was some penciled hoax.

Now as he watched his friends stare at the sketches on the paper he realized their confusion.

He pointed to a rectangle drawn at the top. “The head table.” His finger slid down to several circles, tapping one at a time as he whispered, “The delegates from Europe, the representatives from American oil companies, members of Congress.”

Abda saw their eyes go from confusion to realization to excitement as they, too, started to see the meaning of the codes.

“The banquet?” Khaled said softly and Abda could see him restraining a smile.

Abda took Qasim’s pen and circled several of the penciled-in codes of two to three letters, sometimes with a number.

“It is not only every table arrangement, but every seat assignment,” he told them. “We now know exactly where our target will be seated.”

Saturday, June 10
EchoEnergy

“A tall latte with steamed milk instead of cream, and a shot of espresso. Anything else?”

“No, that’s it,” Sabrina said, taking the coffee in one hand while handing the woman her Visa card with the other. The credit card provided her a detailed account of her monthly spending, so she used it constantly to appease her obsession with order and organization. Along with electronic BillPay she no longer found the need to ever carry cash.

Sabrina had made this exchange every Saturday morning for almost a year with the small Asian woman who ran EchoEnergy’s Coffee Shack, and yet every Saturday the woman pretended both the order and Sabrina were new to her. Neither woman called the other by name despite their employee badges prominently displaying their names in bold letters alongside their mug shots. One woman clipped hers to the strap of her coffee-stained apron, the other to the lapel of her white lab coat, and that alone determined the difference, the boundaries between them. It hadn’t taken Sabrina long to understand the social hierarchy within the corporation.

Quite honestly, the lack of familiarity didn’t bother Sabrina. She liked her privacy, even liked maintaining a level of anonymity, something she had gotten used to and had taken for granted living in Chicago. It wasn’t much different than being a professor and keeping a social distance from her students. Or at least that’s how Sabrina looked at it, despite thinking it a bit contradictory to EchoEnergy’s fundamental philosophy. The industrial park sprawled over 100 acres in the middle of nowhere and prided itself on the small-town atmosphere it had created, providing fitness, recreation and dining areas that made it look more like a miniresort than a manufacturing park. There was even a dry cleaner, bank branch and convenience shop that sold anything from a gallon of milk to Seminole T-shirts.

CEO William Sidel often bragged that his 267 employees were one big happy family. Lansik had used his own version of that spiel during Sabrina’s job interview. Working in a small, communitylike setting had been the last thing Sabrina was interested in. She already had family members who had become strangers to her. She didn’t need more strangers pretending to be family.

On Saturday mornings it should have been particularly difficult for Sabrina not to get to know the few who walked the halls of the West Park, which included the laboratories, offices and café. Even the plant ran with what they called a skeleton crew of only about two dozen over the weekend. But that’s when the class separation, the hierarchy, revealed itself. Anyone with a white lab coat stood out, almost detached from the rest of the company and unapproachable, getting a respected nod and courtesy “hello” but nothing more, as if everyone believed the scientists had much more important things to do. After all, it was the scientists’ mystery process that kept them employed. So all Sabrina had to do was slip on her white lab coat and suddenly she gained the privacy and anonymity she craved.

Most of the time she loved Saturday mornings. She took refuge in the silence, the closed doors, the absence of phones ringing and computers humming. This morning she turned on all the lights in the lab and her office. The misty fog of sunrise had been pushed out by heavy bruise-colored clouds, swollen and bloated and threatening to burst at any moment. They rumbled overhead, sealing in the hot, steamy air.

She noticed Dwight Lansik’s office door was still open, left ajar just as it had been the entire day before. She knocked before entering. They were usually the only two at work on Saturdays, he, of course, already here since he had been spending the nights. Out of curiosity Sabrina opened his closet door. There in the middle of the floor was his ratty duffel bag.

This didn’t seem right.

Okay, maybe he and his wife had suddenly reunited. He wouldn’t need to stay here anymore. But would he leave his personal items? She glanced over her shoulder and hesitated, then knelt beside the bag. She pulled back the main zipper. Everything looked to be in perfect order, folded and tucked. She opened one of the smaller side zippers to find a wallet and car keys. Now,
that
was strange.

Sabrina left the duffel bag and moved to the one window in Dwight Lansik’s office. She stretched and twisted, but still couldn’t see the corner of the back parking lot, close to the river, the spot where all the plant crew migrated. She had walked out one evening with Lansik and when he headed in the opposite direction he had joked that his Crown Victoria looked much more impressive among the Chevys and Fords than in the West Park lot with all the Mercedeses, BMWs and Lexuses.

She went back to the closet and grabbed the keys out of the duffel bag. Something definitely wasn’t right.

Saturday, June 10
EchoEnergy

“A tall latte with steamed milk instead of cream, and a shot of espresso. Anything else?”

“No, that’s it,” Sabrina said, taking the coffee in one hand while handing the woman her Visa card with the other. The credit card provided her a detailed account of her monthly spending, so she used it constantly to appease her obsession with order and organization. Along with electronic BillPay she no longer found the need to ever carry cash.

Sabrina had made this exchange every Saturday morning for almost a year with the small Asian woman who ran EchoEnergy’s Coffee Shack, and yet every Saturday the woman pretended both the order and Sabrina were new to her. Neither woman called the other by name despite their employee badges prominently displaying their names in bold letters alongside their mug shots. One woman clipped hers to the strap of her coffee-stained apron, the other to the lapel of her white lab coat, and that alone determined the difference, the boundaries between them. It hadn’t taken Sabrina long to understand the social hierarchy within the corporation.

Quite honestly, the lack of familiarity didn’t bother Sabrina. She liked her privacy, even liked maintaining a level of anonymity, something she had gotten used to and had taken for granted living in Chicago. It wasn’t much different than being a professor and keeping a social distance from her students. Or at least that’s how Sabrina looked at it, despite thinking it a bit contradictory to EchoEnergy’s fundamental philosophy. The industrial park sprawled over 100 acres in the middle of nowhere and prided itself on the small-town atmosphere it had created, providing fitness, recreation and dining areas that made it look more like a miniresort than a manufacturing park. There was even a dry cleaner, bank branch and convenience shop that sold anything from a gallon of milk to Seminole T-shirts.

CEO William Sidel often bragged that his 267 employees were one big happy family. Lansik had used his own version of that spiel during Sabrina’s job interview. Working in a small, communitylike setting had been the last thing Sabrina was interested in. She already had family members who had become strangers to her. She didn’t need more strangers pretending to be family.

On Saturday mornings it should have been particularly difficult for Sabrina not to get to know the few who walked the halls of the West Park, which included the laboratories, offices and café. Even the plant ran with what they called a skeleton crew of only about two dozen over the weekend. But that’s when the class separation, the hierarchy, revealed itself. Anyone with a white lab coat stood out, almost detached from the rest of the company and unapproachable, getting a respected nod and courtesy “hello” but nothing more, as if everyone believed the scientists had much more important things to do. After all, it was the scientists’ mystery process that kept them employed. So all Sabrina had to do was slip on her white lab coat and suddenly she gained the privacy and anonymity she craved.

Most of the time she loved Saturday mornings. She took refuge in the silence, the closed doors, the absence of phones ringing and computers humming. This morning she turned on all the lights in the lab and her office. The misty fog of sunrise had been pushed out by heavy bruise-colored clouds, swollen and bloated and threatening to burst at any moment. They rumbled overhead, sealing in the hot, steamy air.

She noticed Dwight Lansik’s office door was still open, left ajar just as it had been the entire day before. She knocked before entering. They were usually the only two at work on Saturdays, he, of course, already here since he had been spending the nights. Out of curiosity Sabrina opened his closet door. There in the middle of the floor was his ratty duffel bag.

This didn’t seem right.

Okay, maybe he and his wife had suddenly reunited. He wouldn’t need to stay here anymore. But would he leave his personal items? She glanced over her shoulder and hesitated, then knelt beside the bag. She pulled back the main zipper. Everything looked to be in perfect order, folded and tucked. She opened one of the smaller side zippers to find a wallet and car keys. Now,
that
was strange.

Sabrina left the duffel bag and moved to the one window in Dwight Lansik’s office. She stretched and twisted, but still couldn’t see the corner of the back parking lot, close to the river, the spot where all the plant crew migrated. She had walked out one evening with Lansik and when he headed in the opposite direction he had joked that his Crown Victoria looked much more impressive among the Chevys and Fords than in the West Park lot with all the Mercedeses, BMWs and Lexuses.

She went back to the closet and grabbed the keys out of the duffel bag. Something definitely wasn’t right.