Almost Complete Short Fiction, page 63
I was wondering about the weather; for most of the day the sky had been clear except for a few patches of cloud, and the TV forecast hadn’t said anything beyond the standard “chance of rain.” I needn’t have worried; Higher Authority came through in plenty of time. By the time I got the guns back together the sky had clouded over with big heavy masses of cumulo-nimbus and you could hear an occasional low rumble not far away.
We had an early dinner, frozen stuff from Waitrose; Leila had confessed to total incompetence in the kitchen and I wasn’t much better, but that’s why Michael’s boss gave us microwaves. We didn’t talk much.
After dinner Leila went into the bedroom and came out a little later wearing a long shapeless black dress, her head covered by a black hijab scarf. “Don’t laugh,” she said. Her face was as stormy as the sky outside. “Don’t you dare laugh, and don’t make any jokes. There’s nothing funny about it.”
I handed her the Makarov and she made it disappear somewhere in the folds of her outfit. “Ready?” I said, and she nodded. “All right, then.” I stood up and slipped the Tokarev into the waistband of my pants and zipped my black windbreaker halfway up to cover it. I picked up the backpack off the couch and hooked it over my shoulders and got out my cell phone and keyed it.
Michael answered immediately. “Time,” I said, and stuck the phone in my pocket and jerked my head toward the door. “Let’s go.”
The rain was fairly bucketing down as we came out the front door of the building. A black cab sat at the curb. Its lights flashed, twice. “Run,” I said, and we sprinted across the sidewalk.
Michael was sitting behind the wheel. He was wearing a tweed jacket and a cap instead of his usual white getup. He didn’t look around, let alone make any move to help, as I wrenched the door open and we tumbled into the back seat. He put the cab in gear and pulled away from the curb without a word, while we tried to wipe the rain from our faces. Should have brought an umbrella, I thought, but some things are just too ridiculous.
The storm was really hitting its stride as we rolled through the dark streets, great white forks of lightning stabbing down toward the city and thunder blamming and slamming away like a bombing strike. I started to tell Michael to convey my thanks, but he didn’t seem to be in a mood for conversation.
Abdelkader’s mosque was located on a crooked one-way street in a north London neighborhood. His home was just down the street, but according to Michael’s information he’d be working late tonight in his office in the rear of the mosque. There would be a single bodyguard; otherwise, at this hour and in this weather, there shouldn’t be anyone else around.
Michael stopped the cab in front of the darkened mosque and waited while we jumped out and ran for it. I headed around the corner of the building at a dead run, Leila splashing along behind me. By now we were both drenched to the marrow; lucky if we didn’t catch pneumonia, but the storm made unbeatable cover.
A paved walkway ran along the side of the mosque, toward the rear, where lights shone through a couple of windows next to a small door. I flattened my back against the wall beside the door and nodded to Leila.
She went over and began to pound. I could barely hear her knocking over the boom of the thunder and the pounding of the rain, but no doubt it sounded louder inside. In less than a minute the door opened.
Leila began screaming in Arabic, a high penetrating wail that cut through the racket of the storm like a runaway chainsaw. She had her headscarf pulled over the bottom part of her face to form a veil, but it didn’t muffle her a bit. She waved her hands frantically, pointing back up toward the street, the way we’d just come. I couldn’t understand a word but the meaning was obvious: come quick, hurry, look—
And a moment later there he was, a husky young man in a camo jacket and a fancy skullcap. He stood there, peering the way she was pointing and trying to shield his eyes from the rain, while I came up behind him. The Tokarev made a solid thunk against the side of his head and I caught him as he went down.
Leila took his feet and we dragged him inside and shut the door. I checked for a pulse and found one—I don’t know why, I didn’t give a damn one way or another—but he was going to be out of the picture a lot longer than we needed.
To the left of the entrance was another door, with a sign in Arabic. The handle turned readily in my left hand. The room beyond was brightly lit and I blinked involuntarily as I stepped through, holding the Tokarev ready, into Abdelkader’s office.
It was a good-sized place, bigger than it had looked in the pictures, the walls paneled in some sort of dark wood and hung with prayer rugs and banners with calligraphic inscriptions stitched in gold. At the far end, behind a massive wooden desk, sat a man in a white robe and turban. I didn’t have any trouble recognizing him; I’d been looking at that face for over a week.
He looked up; his eyes went wide. He said something in Arabic, first in a puzzled voice and then an angry shout. He started to get to his feet, still yelling. Maybe he was calling for the guard; maybe he was telling me to get the fuck out. I didn’t really care. His time was up.
I held the Tokarev out in front of me and sighted. I was just taking up the slack when there was a loud bang and a tiny dark spot appeared on the front of the white robe, a couple of inches below where I’d been aiming.
Abdelkader stopped shouting. He stopped moving, and then, after a second or so, he stopped being alive. You could see it happen; there is nothing quite like that sudden total slackness. A moment later he slid down behind the desk out of sight.
Beside me Leila said something I didn’t understand. Then, in English, “I’m sorry, Gordon. I couldn’t—”
“That’s all right.” I gave her a quick touch on the shoulder. “I should have asked if you wanted to do it. All right, let’s finish up.”
I stuck the Tok back in my belt while Leila stepped behind me and unzipped the backpack and got out the box of CD disks. I went over and switched on the computer on Abdelkader’s desk—good computer, latest model Dell; whatever else the deceased had had against Western civilization, he’d certainly been up on the technology—and put a disk in. The drive hummed and then the screen displayed the first of Christiaan’s doctored photos, depicting Abdelkader apparently sodomizing a dark-haired, scared-looking teenage boy.
I set the box of disks beside the computer. Leila had already opened the envelope and scattered the prints artistically about the desk and floor. She leaned over the desk and dropped a couple on Abdelkader’s body and then dug out her hand-written note. She started to put it on the desk but I said, “Wait.” I’d just spotted a big curved Middle Eastern dagger in a fancy sheath on the wall.
Leila saw where I was looking. “Oh, yes,” she said, and went to get it, while I used the sleeve of my soggy windbreaker to wipe everything I’d touched.
The guard was still limp on the floor of the entrance hall. Leila held the note up to the office door and I drove the dagger through to pin it in place.
Outside it was still raining as hard as ever. As we reached the street I took out the cell phone to call Michael, but before I could key it the black cab appeared at the curb. Not showed up, appeared, just like that, without even any beam-me-up-Scotty shimmering. This time the back door swung open for us. “Go,” I said as we piled inside, but Michael was already going, snaking down that crooked street and around the next corner like a Grand Prix driver going for the money lap.
I took Leila’s pistol and cleared it and dropped it into the backpack along with mine. “You can dispose of these, can’t you?” I said to Michael. “Beat them into pruning hooks or whatever.”
Then I got out the cell phone again and made a call to Scotland Yard.
“Outstanding,” Himself said. “Absolutely brilliant. I couldn’t be more pleased.”
We were sitting on the couch in my flat. Or rather Leila and I were; Himself, of course, was looking out at us from the laptop screen. Behind him the TV was showing a BBC newscast. The sound was off but it didn’t matter; they weren’t saying anything they hadn’t already said at least half a dozen times this morning. Right now the screen showed a picture of Abdelkader’s mosque.
“I was a bit unhappy last night,” he said, “when you left the bodyguard alive. If he’d regained consciousness before the police arrived, he might have ruined things. But no harm done.”
He smiled at me. “And I’m definitely going to have to give your friend Christiaan a bonus. All those people viewing those forged photos,” he said, “they’ll never know they’re looking at the work of an authentic genius.”
Leila said, “Not everyone is going to be convinced, you know. A lot of people are simply going to refuse to believe it.” Her mouth quirked ruefully. “I’m afraid we’re very good at denial.”
“Like everyone else in the world,” Himself said. “And in fact those things are being said even now. Al-Jazeera has already run several statements by various prominent persons, denouncing the whole thing as the work of the CIA, the Israelis, or both.”
He made a dismissive gesture. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve gotten what I was after.”
I said, “Just what were you after, if you don’t mind my asking? I never did get your angle on this business.”
“Oh, that’s simple enough. In that same neighborhood,” Himself said, “less than a kilometer from the mosque, lives a Syrian family with a sixteen-year-old son. The parents are neither religious nor political, but the boy has been showing signs of interest—attending services now and then, talking with some of Abdelkader’s younger followers—” He looked at Leila. “I’m afraid you’d recognize the pattern all too well.”
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”
“And,” he said, “it couldn’t be allowed to go on. Because that boy has a musical talent such as I haven’t seen since the young Mozart—even now, he can do things with a violin to make your heart stop—and it would have been an unspeakable tragedy to let those lunatics destroy him.”
“Do you think it worked?” Leila said.
“No doubt about it. Already young Jamal is in a state of shock at the news,” he said. “A few reinforcing images planted in his mind as he sleeps, and he will never again feel anything but revulsion at the thought of Abdelkader and all he stood for.”
I said, “I’m a son of a bitch.”
“I won’t argue the point. But in this case you did a truly worthy thing. And now,” Himself said, “I have pressing business to attend to, so I’ll leave you to yourselves. I’ll be in touch, though. Quite soon.”
The screen went dark. I flipped the laptop shut and turned to face Leila. “Well,” I said, “what do you want to do now?”
“What now?” Her voice and face had gone bleak. “Now,” she said, “we say goodbye.”
I opened my mouth to protest but she raised a hand. “No, please. The longer we’re together, the harder it’s going to be to end it. Even one more day together—let alone another night—”
She shook her head. “Reality time,” she said. “It’s over.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” I looked at her, wanting badly to reach out to her but knowing she’d pull away. “As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t ever have to be.”
“A pretty thing to say. Maybe you even mean it. But it wouldn’t work,” she said. “It couldn’t. This has been an unusual assignment for me, you know. Most of the time I have to operate in communities where you would never blend in—where you’d probably be killed—and anyway I couldn’t do my job with you along. And you’ve got your own work to do, too.”
“We could ask Himself to release us from our contracts.”
“And we could ask the sun to rise in the west. Don’t talk nonsense,” she said angrily. “You know better.”
She was right, of course. For all the witty urbane persona, Himself was still who he was, and his contracts had extremely serious penalty clauses. People didn’t make deals with him and then back out when they realized they’d made a mistake. If they could, where would he be?
She stood up. “I’ve already packed my things. Please, Gordon,” she said, “if you care for me at all, don’t try to stop me.”
I watched as she went into the bedroom and came back carrying her bag and her coat. I got up and followed her to the door. She turned and looked up at me and I raised a hand toward her face, but she said, “No, please. If you touch me I may not be able to do this at all. Goodbye, Gordon,” she said. “Take care of yourself.”
“Goodbye, Leila,” I said.
After the door closed behind her I stood there for a few minutes tasting those last two words in my mouth, knowing at last what the trapped wolf tastes when he chews off his own leg.
That afternoon I took a cab out to Heathrow and sat for a couple of hours waiting for my plane, watching all the people who knew where they were going.
William Sanders, Almost Complete Short Fiction
