man he didn’t know, and blown off his leg below the knee.
The doctors said he was lucky that he lost his leg below the knee instead of above it. They said it was much more difficult to learn to walk when the amputation was above the joint. And then they gave him a good French prosthesis, very light, very durable. He couldn’t run on it but he could walk and stand and do what he must do. And in a way, he had been lucky to lose his leg. It was the amputation that had brought him to Sheikh Osama’s attention – or, to be accurate, it was the fact that he didn’t go home after he lost his leg that brought him to the sheikh’s attention.
Like Osama bin Laden, he was from Arabia. He went to Afghanistan when the Americans had invaded to slaughter the Taliban, and he went there for the same reason that other Saudis did: to serve, to sacrifice, to kill – and, if necessary, to die. Like Sheikh Osama, he was well educated – he spoke English and French and some German – and he came from a wealthy family. He didn’t have to go to Afghanistan. He could have stayed in Arabia, done nothing, said nothing, and lived in the lap of luxury like the corrupt royal princes. And he could have returned to Arabia when he lost his leg; his father, after a suitable period of sulking, would have taken him in. But he didn’t go back.
Instead, after his leg had healed and he could walk again, he went into the mountains near the Pakistan border to find Sheikh Osama. He never did find him, of course – he had been naive and arrogant to think that he could – but Osama somehow, some way, had found him. He was taken blindfolded to the house where Osama was staying that night – he’d be in a different house or tent or cave the next night – and he had tea with him. He had been shocked at how weak the sheikh had looked and he couldn’t help but wonder if he was still alive today, though he would never have said this aloud. He was with him for only an hour, but in that hour Sheikh Osama saw the depths of his belief, the fire of faith blazing in his soul. Osama told him what he must do next, then embraced him, and when Osama’s cheek touched his, he was surprised by how hot the man’s skin was. He could still feel that burning cheek next to his own. He would feel it for the rest of his life.
Following the meeting with Sheikh Osama, he made his way out of Pakistan and made contact with another Saudi, a man not much older than himself, a man who might one day be the next Osama. This man provided money and passports and equipment and helped him cross borders. They hadn’t spoken face-to-face in three years, not since London, but this man, thousands of miles away, was still helping him. He was the one who had given him the name of the couple in Philadelphia that had hidden him for two months, and he was the one who would make sure the couple never talked about him.
Ah, finally, there he was! The boy stood for a long time on the stoop of his building, as if he was reluctant to go wherever he was going. He was holding two or three books in his right hand. The papers had said the boy was fourteen but he looked younger, much younger. And he was small, maybe five-foot-two, less than a hundred pounds. But the boy’s size was irrelevant, as was his age. He had worked with martyrs who were as young as nine. All he hoped for was that the boy was ready. That his hatred had made him ready.
As DeMarco lay in bed he could hear the shower running – and the voice of a content woman singing in the shower.
Could life possibly get any better than this?
He’d been in Key West for five days, and for once his vacation had been exactly as advertised. The daytime temperature had been a balmy 80 degrees, the breezes had been mild, it hadn’t rained once, and the sea was as warm as tepid bath water. His second night in Key West he’d been sitting in a bar on Duval Street, looking out at the ocean. He’d had swordfish for dinner and the bartender had just cleared away his plate when a woman in her late thirties sat down one bar stool over from his.
He had glanced at her and then, because she looked so good, he immediately did a ham actor’s double take. Oh, great, he’d thought, that was really suave. He sat there, staring down into his drink, desperately trying to think of something clever to say, something other than How do you like Key West? Isn’t the view great? Isn’t the weather wonderful? But his brain chose that moment to vapor-lock; he couldn’t produce even a passable, much less original, opening line. And then she said, ‘Hi, my name’s Ellie. Isn’t the weather wonderful here?’ It didn’t sound bad at all when she said it.
Ellie Myers was cute and funny and bright. She had dark hair and bright blue eyes and a light-up-the-room smile that made little dimples in her cheeks. She also had legs that looked very good in shorts, though a bit on the pale side, as if she too resided somewhere far north of Florida. DeMarco soon found out that she was a teacher from Iowa, divorced, no kids, and, like DeMarco, had just decided to escape the grim midwestern winter to enjoy the sun. They wondered together if there was something wrong with them, going on vacation by themselves, and soon concluded that there wasn’t. They went to bed together that night and for the three nights that followed. And they still had one night left, thank you, Jesus.
They had been snorkeling and had taken sunset walks on the beach. They had sat naked in a Jacuzzi, even though it had been too hot to do so. They drank too much and ate too much and made love – but not too much. And DeMarco never once thought about John Mahoney or Reza Zarif. He barely thought about his ex-wife and his asshole of a cousin.
He did make one call to New York the day he arrived in Florida and found out that Danny’s case wouldn’t go to trial for six months. DeMarco wondered if Danny’s boss was hoping the witness would die during that time or lose her memory, or maybe he was thinking about forcing her to lose her memory. DeMarco wondered – but he didn’t care.
Ellie came out of the bathroom. Her hair was uncombed – wet and tangled – but she was already dressed in shorts and a T-shirt that she’d bought in a tourist shop. They’d been living together for three days but she still didn’t feel comfortable dressing in front of him. The T-shirt had a grinning alligator and a pink palm tree on it, and there were glittery things on the palm tree’s fronds; it was okay to wear T-shirts like that when you were in Key West.
She smiled at him and said good morning. He smiled back and said he’d already called room service, and coffee and croissants were on the way. She turned around to rummage in her purse for her comb, and DeMarco admired her backside and wondered if he could talk her into getting back into bed. He had concluded a long time ago that there should be some way to stop time and cause all relationships to stay forever at the four-day point.
At that moment there was a knock on the door. Ellie opened it and took the tray from the room service guy and overtipped him because she was feeling so good. She placed the tray on the dresser and handed DeMarco his coffee. Then she glanced down at the paper that had been delivered with the coffee.
‘Oh, those bastards!’ she said when she saw the headline: TERRORIST SHOT ON D.C. SHUTTLE.
Ellie went shopping, to buy Florida trinkets for her nephews and her sister and all the other poor souls she knew who were freezing back in Iowa. She asked DeMarco if he wanted to go with her but he’d begged off. He enjoyed shopping almost as much as having his teeth extracted. So instead of trailing behind Ellie, walking from store to store, bored out of his skull, he sat in a lounge chair and read the morning paper. It was the first time he’d looked at one since he’d been in Florida.
He read the three articles on the hijacking attempt, skipped the editorials on Broderick’s bill, and then, because he hadn’t been keeping his ear to the ground as directed, he called Jerry Hansen at Homeland Security to see if there was anything new going on with Reza Zarif. Jerry wasn’t in. Too bad. He’d tried – and he wasn’t going to try anymore. Hassan Zarif was just going to have to accept that
