Collision(28)

“Where is Teach?” the man asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Ben frowned at him as if he were speaking gibberish.

“Identify yourself,” the man said. He looked first at Kidwell, who writhed in pain on the floor, blood seeping between his fingers as he gripped his leg.

Ben managed to speak. “He’s Agent Kidwell, Homeland Security. Supposedly.”

“Where is the woman you took from the lake house? Tell me or I shoot.” The man stood over Kidwell. “Did Barker work for you? The Arabs?”

“Don’t know . . . what you mean . . .” Kidwell gritted his teeth, closed his hand over the flesh wound in his leg.

“You. Up. Against the wall.” The man’s gun tracked him as Ben obeyed.

“I haven’t seen any woman,” Ben said. “I’m not with Homeland Security; he brought me here.”

The man glanced between Ben and Kidwell again. “Who are you?”

“Ben Forsberg.”

The gun wavered and naked shock crossed the big man’s gaunt face. “Say again.” As if Ben had spoken in Latin.

“My name is Ben Forsberg,” Ben repeated. Then in panic the words seemed to spill from his mouth: “They think I knew some hit man and I don’t, I shouldn’t be here . . .”

The man shushed Ben, bringing his gun to his own lips like a hushing finger. He blinked as though thinking. Then Ben could see a decision made, in the man’s sudden resolve. “My name is Pilgrim. Come with me. Help me find her.”

“No . . . other prisoner here.” Kidwell had pulled himself up to a sitting position and leaned against the wall, clutching at his torn leg. “Just this man, and you’ve shot a federal officer, and you’re in deep shit.”

“I clean up fast,” Pilgrim said. “You. Come with me.”

Ben wasn’t inclined to trade in Kidwell for this new jerk, but he had no choice. He followed the man into the hallway. Pilgrim ran to the other doors, yelling “Teach!” and listening for a response.

“Who are you?” Ben asked.

Pilgrim didn’t spare him a glance. “I’m the guy who’s getting you the hell out of here.”

At the middle of the hallway, between them and the room they’d left Kidwell in, the elevator door pinged and opened.

“Get behind me,” Pilgrim said.


Khaled’s Report—Beirut

My recruitment was a seduction. Not in the physical sense; there was of course none of that. But in the long crush of weeks after my brothers and my father died, I began to realize I was being followed. By a man I now know as J.

At first I was very afraid. No one had been brought to justice for the bombing, and I wondered if my brothers’ enemies—whether they be domestic or foreign—might target me. Paranoia is not a healthy life but often I noticed J—in the market, as I made my way home from the university, returning home from my aunt’s house with my mother. J watched us, followed us. I said nothing to Mama; her worries were already crushing her.

He approaches me at the school library. Sits down across from me at a table. We are alone.

“Hello, Khaled.”

I say nothing.

“I know who killed your brothers and their friends,” he says.

I look back down at my financial analysis textbook. The charts and tables swim before my eyes.

“Don’t you wish to know?” he says after my silence becomes uncomfortable.

“Yes,” I say.

Then he surprises me. “Why do you wish to know?”

“Because I want to fight back against whoever killed them. I want them dead. I want them suffering.”

Now it was his turn to be silent.

“You seem a stuffy sort and you are thin. I’m not sure you will be useful.” J puts his hands flat on the table.

I let all the strength gather in my body. “I’d like to be useful.”

“Come with me,” he says.

I do. Over the next day he shows me the proof—financial trails, photos, a picture of the Khaled boy with the deformed lip, now lying on a morgue slab.

“I killed him,” J says. “He cried before I shot him. I didn’t much like him. He wouldn’t betray his friends, he wouldn’t work with us.”

I don’t take any relief in seeing the dead man, even though he planted the bomb. He is just a cog; I want to break the machine. “You could give all this evidence to the police.”

“They would do nothing,” J says. “You could do something.”

“What?”

J leans back in his chair, lit his cigarette. “Join us.”

“No.”

He offers the cigarettes to me and I shake my head. “I expected you to say yes.”