him to move his leg and make room for her. In his country, she would have stood in the aisle of the bus until he permitted her to sit.
And she wasn’t even a real American, yet like all women in this country – all women exposed to this country – she had an air of confidence about her that infuriated him. The men here were weak and undeservedly arrogant, and the culture as a whole was decadent and wasteful, but the women were the worst. They went about with their heads uncovered and their faces unveiled, the young ones dressing like painted whores, but their lack of modesty was not as infuriating as their presumption – no, not a presumption, their conviction – that they were equal to men. And it wasn’t even the rich highborn ones who acted this way. This woman, who probably cleaned toilets for a living, had no doubt that she had a right to speak to him, to sit next to him, to intrude into his space and his thoughts as if she were his equal.
He had crossed into the United States from Mexico, and on his way to the East Coast he had stopped at a restaurant in Texas. He ordered coffee and the waitress brought him a cup that was tepid and weak, as if it had been made with yesterday’s grounds. He told her this and said, ‘Bring me another cup,’ and she had said, ‘You mean, Bring me another cup please, now, don’t you, honey?’ She was smiling when she said this, but at the same time she was serious, correcting his manners. He looked at her and said, ‘I meant what I said. Make me a decent cup of hot coffee.’ And she had said, ‘You know what, sugar? You can just go fuck yourself.’ And then she’d walked away and started talking to another waitress, laughing as she gestured at him with her head. He’d left the restaurant a few minutes later, his face burning with embarrassment. He’d thought about waiting until she left work and cutting off her lips, but of course he didn’t. He was too disciplined to permit himself such an indulgence.
He saw a sign on the highway. The bus was still a hundred miles from Cleveland, a hundred more miles of sitting in this cramped seat next to this woman, his right leg on fire. It would have been so much better if he could have flown from Philadelphia to Cleveland, but he could no longer take the risk. So now he traveled by bus and by train and by car, but usually by bus. Security on trains had become tighter since London and Madrid, and he was always worried that in a car he would be pulled over by some country sheriff because of his race.
And the problem with air travel wasn’t just that he was an Arab, it was his right leg. Below the knee it was made of metal and plastic and it set off the detectors in airports. Thanks to the two fools in Baltimore, the American security forces knew about his leg, and any foreigner with an artificial leg would be detained until his identity could be confirmed. It wouldn’t matter if he shaved his head or put padding in his cheeks or wore a wig and contact lenses; it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t look anything like the poor picture they had of him in which he wore a beard. They would detain him until the FBI examined him, and the FBI would confirm his identity.
So now he traveled on buses with cleaning women, taking seven hours to make a journey that should have taken an hour and a half. But that was all right. He had a lifetime in which to complete his mission.
Mahoney was pissed.
That morning in The Washington Post there had been an article saying that he’d been visited by Hassan Zarif, brother of the terrorist Reza Zarif. And the reporter had, of course, discovered that Mahoney and Reza’s father had been boyhood friends in Boston. The guy had even found a high school yearbook picture of Mahoney and Ali Zarif dressed in baseball uniforms, Mahoney’s thick arm around Ali’s thin neck.
‘How’d the press even know he was here?’ Mahoney said to DeMarco. ‘I didn’t have him down on the damn list as comin’ to see me.’
DeMarco was fairly sure he knew the answer to that question: McGuire, the U.S. Capitol cop. When DeMarco had threatened McGuire with an outdoor cold-weather posting for hassling Hassan Zarif, he’d made the mistake of saying that Hassan was expected by the speaker. So McGuire, probably recognizing the Zarif name, decided to exercise a little anonymous payback and informed the Post that Mahoney had been paid a visit by a man with the same last name as a terrorist. And the Post took it from there.
‘Geez, I can’t imagine,’ DeMarco said.
‘The bastards – TV guys too – they’ve been calling all morning,’ Mahoney said, ‘asking what Hassie was doing here.’
‘What’d you tell them?’
‘The truth, sort of.’
That was Mahoney: a man who told the truth – sort of.
‘I told them,’ Mahoney said, ‘that I had known Reza when he was a kid and had known his dad all my life. I said Hassan had stopped by because he was here in town for somethin’, I didn’t know what, but since he was here and he knew I’d want to know how his dad was doin’ after his heart attack, he stopped by to tell me. I also told them that Hassan and his family had gotten a pretty good grilling from the cops, this maybe being understandable, but that we had to watch out we didn’t ruin their lives because of what his brother did.’
‘But you didn’t tell them Hassan thought the FBI’s story had a bunch of holes in it and he wanted you to get him some answers.’
‘No. Hell, no!’
Mahoney brooded for a moment over the political liability of having his picture in the paper with the father of a dead terrorist.
‘So what’d you find out?’ he said to DeMarco.
DeMarco told him.
‘You think it means anything, this yahoo’s fingerprint on the bullet box?’
DeMarco shrugged. ‘If I was placing a bet, I’d put my money on the Bureau’s explanation. Reza probably bought the gun from this Cray character like they think, and when the FBI finds Cray he’ll admit it.’
‘So you think Reza just woke up one day and decided to kill his family and crash a plane into the White House?’
‘I guess,’ DeMarco said. ‘There wasn’t anything I learned from Homeland Security that would make me think different.’
‘Well, I don’t buy it,’ Mahoney said, his big stubborn chin jutting outward. ‘I’ve been thinkin’ about this a whole lot since his brother was here, and I think Hassan’s right. There has to be something more goin’ on than what the Bureau thinks. In fact, I’m sure there is.’
But DeMarco knew that Mahoney wasn’t so sure that he’d say what he’d just said to the press – or the Bureau.
‘So what do you want me to do?’ DeMarco said. ‘I’m going on vacation next week.’
‘For now, just keep your ear to the ground. Stay in touch with Homeland Security and make sure the FBI’s really looking for this Cray guy.’
DeMarco didn’t have the authority to make the FBI do anything, so all he did was nod his head. He wasn’t worried about the FBI diligently searching for Donny Cray; he knew that with a case of this magnitude they probably had a couple hundred agents out looking for the man. No, he wasn’t worried about any lack of effort on the Bureau’s part. What he was worried about was that he wouldn’t be able to take the vacation he had scheduled three months ago.
It
