CHAPTER 3

“No,” Omar said as he sat down in a chair at a European-style coffee bar on Main Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan the afternoon of Thursday, September 20, 2007. “No, this is where we must turn aside from extreme views of Islam. It is wrong to put out a death-warrant on that Swedish cartoonist.”

He had finished his afternoon class in modern Arabic literature around 3 p.m. and driven to downtown Ann Arbor where he had parked on Liberty Street and walked up the street to join friends: – Jeff and Jamme, doctoral students whom he had met the previous month upon first returning to America from his sabbatical in Iraq; Rafae Rahman al-Zamili, who was now an assistant professor in archeology at the university; Abdul-Salam, a post-doctoral visiting scholar from the U.A.E., and Abdul-Salam’s roommate Lila, a young woman from Sweden.

Omar had been greeted by Abdul-Salam with a question about the al-Qaeda threat to Lars Vilks, and if it could be said to represent the views in the Quran.

“I am a Muslim,” Omar said, “and opposed to the war, and adhere to the Quran in all that I can. But it is too much to betray freedom of expression in such a way, putting out a bounty of one hundred thousand dollars on that man because of a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed as a dog?”

Abdul-Salam looked up thoughtfully, sipping his hot drink. “But it has offended so many Muslims.”

“It offended me as well,” Omar said. “I find it sad that someone would defile the Prophet in such a way, but we do not approve of killing someone for exercising his freedom of the press.”

Jay, one of the owners of the restaurant, came up with some espresso. “Just the way you like it, Jamme,” he said, setting down her cup and saucer.

There were small pink marshmallows on the tray in the center of the table, and she took one and dropped it in her drink. “This is my favorite time of day,” she said, “relaxing after classes talking with friends about the world today.”

“And Iraq today?” Jay said, looking at Omar. “We have all been debating among ourselves what you would say about the war once you returned. How long has it been since you left the States?”

“Three years and more,” Omar said.

“And you’re here only for the fall semester?” Jay said.

“Then back to Basrah,” Omar said. “The place is a wreck. There’s no where to turn around for Iraqis. We’re stuck in a purgatory that would defy the artistry of Dante to describe.”

“Such an irony,” Rafae said, “such upheaval in Iraq, and fifteen minutes away by jet they’re building the tallest skyscraper in the world in Dubai.”

“And we see growing oppression in Myanmar and Buddhist monks out braving the government thugs,” Omar said. “And there is something ineffective in one after another government exhorting the military there to allow the demonstrations. They’re not speaking the same language.”

“The same language?” Jeff said.

“Even in translation,” Omar said, “whether a French official or Norwegian, Greek, whoever is out to caution the Myanmar police about killing innocent monks, the diplomats speak the language of subtlety, la langue de subtilité to the elitists in Paris, a linguagem de sutileza to the Portuguese, and on and on, but the junta leaders in Myanmar speak the language of brutality. Something is lost in the communiqués before they reach Yangon. It’s as if a garbled English version ends up sounding like, ‘…It exhorts to him to that it releases to the prisoners….’”

“What?” Jamme said. “The monks?”

“Exactly,” Omar said. “What? What does it mean to a dictator in Burma for a German foreign minister to object publicly to his crackdown on the marchers?”

“And the prisoners, there or in Israel…” Jeff said.

“Or in Guantanamo…” Rafae said.

“So true,” Omar said. “It’s like the climate of fear all over Basrah now, for journalists like my friend with Ad-Dunya. He has received threats, and they have limited budgets now and declining circulation, being an independent, and they publish fewer photographs in each succeeding issue, whereas they used to have full color images on page one and the back, and three masked men riding behind him on a motorcycle, while he was going to investigate an abduction of an imam, shot and damaged his car, but Jameel escaped without injury.”

“Is he the one you wrote us about three years ago?” Rafae asked. “The man you said was investigating the planting of hazardous materials by U.S. soldiers out near a village, in southern Iraq?”

“Yes,” Omar said. “Near the village of Quraysh. Jameel Abd al-Qazwini. He was so shaken he thought of fleeing Basrah, and it is his home city. He told me the last I saw him, just last month before I drove to Kuwait for my flight, that the press is not free there, because journalists are in harm’s way. ‘We are fearful and cautious about our work,’ he said. ‘We can’t report the full story in detail because no one protects us.’ Indeed, in harm’s way.”

“im Weg von Schaden,” Lila said, “to the Germans. In my native Sweden, we feel so secure, i skada långt.”

“I’m impressed with the courage of the reporters who can handle the stress working there,” Jamme said.

“Yes,” Omar said. “Very brave all of them. And in Basrah alone there are now ninety media outlets, and sixty of those being newspapers put out by political factions of one sort or another. Jameel is of the opinion that being independent is no guarantee of safety any longer in Iraq. ‘In fact,’ he told me, ‘being independent can put one on the brink, like sitting on a fence and everyone now is trying to topple the fence. You must be either of one extreme or the other in Iraq now, at least in Baghdad, Basrah, the west.”

Omar’s three years in Basrah, from June 2004 to late August 2007, had been a crescendo of stress such that he had come to fear a nervous breakdown, and thus the chance to teach for a semester again in Ann Arbor had all the allure of a long recuperation from the impossible goals he had set for himself: to stop the suffering of the Iraqi people, to stop the repression of the new government, the sadism of the militias, the insanity of the suicide bombings, the ruthless illegal aggression of the Coalition military, and the collapse of the quality of life such that life for many throughout the southern region of Iraq was a hollow remembrance of bygone days.

There at the coffee bar, he began to reminisce with the others about his own student days the one year he had attended Baghdad University.

On occasion back in 1979 he would sit with two other young men in one of the campus courtyards, the tiles on the floor at forty-five degree angles to the walls, Omar and his friends sitting on the brick edge of a wall built around one of the huge statues spaced about the university. They would dress in conservative tan slacks, black suit jackets and even a tie, or a black and white sweater, legs crossed, perhaps a black woolen cap as autumn deepened. For the freshmen that year, a trim black moustache, their hair growing thick and casually combed, their looks: calm, confident, at ease with each other. Omar still had a loose-fitting gray jacket he had bought that one year he lived in Baghdad before emigrating to the U.S.

Some of the young men of Basrah circa 2007 who had helped him with his house dressed very similarly to those freshmen of 1979. There were six artisans he had hired to create extensive tile work around a fountain on the grounds of his home, as well as plaster moldings throughout the main living areas on the ground floor, even a mural in tempera on the theme of the ziggurats. Omar had paid them as best he could, their clothing at times showing wear: faded blue jeans of various shades; light gray, dark gray slacks, their slim legs showing signs of less than adequate diet; vest jackets, white sweaters, blue-jean jackets the norm in spring and autumn; their looks sometimes pessimistic, or distant, determined, still the trim black moustaches or goatee beards, standing with hands in pockets around their work once completed – the fountain or the mural or some other decorative piece that Omar had commissioned to put some money in their hands.

Those six were to look after his Basrah home and were living there in the third floor guest bedrooms in the hope thieves would not pillage and destroy what Omar had spent so much time in rebuilding.

His last week before leaving Basrah, Omar had stood admiring the mural and put his arm around the shoulders of Wissam, one of the six artisans, Omar dressed in light blue knit shirt open at the collar, gray slacks, black tennis shoes with gold laces, the August heat quite palpable, Wissam – quite lean and looking almost gaunt compared to Omar who was still husky and robust - “due to all this muscular labor” as he would tell his workmen - with his arm around Omar’s shoulder, the two considering if the heat or humidity might damage the tempera before it had been properly sealed with varnishes.

In a sunroom that had been redesigned with new sliding doors, each with two-inch diagonally-placed squares of glass and a two-foot deep reflecting pool about ten feet by six feet, Omar had discussed plans for yet another project, that of redoing the tile work on the pool; when the air-conditioning was working, Omar – dressed in black slippers, gray shorts, and a loose-fitting gray and white short-sleeve shirt, would bend over the floor and explain to Wissam and the others what he envisioned. He again wanted an abstract design symbolic of the ziggurats.

He began telling Rafae and his colleagues at the Ann Arbor coffee bar about all the work yet ahead. “There is yet another corner with brick walls in my garden where I plan to have them create a mural of blue, deep orange, and white – the white like a dove of peace.” Omar sipped his coffee and Jay came over to sit with them. “And there will be olive green trees – the palm trees of southern Iraq. And they will begin it this autumn. They have a scanner and send me a preliminary design, and I make comments, and they think what to do, and make the changes, and send it back to me by email, and when we have reached a consensus, they will begin.”

The artisans would squat around the tile work as they worked in the central foyer – the tones of dark browns, sienna, aquamarine based on the Shaat al-Arab – painstaking effort to cut the pieces of tile so as to create a tight-fitting mosaic, their hands on the floor, handing one tile to the next man for his opinion if it were the correct shade, their backs and knees growing tired as they invested time – and more of Omar’s money – in yet another project.

“My neighbor Mohammed whose son Haider was killed by the U.S. military – and needlessly – soon after the 2003 invasion,” Omar told Rafae and the others, “says he loves watching my tradesmen from his balcony. He accompanied me to Baghdad last winter when there was a lull, and it only lasted a few days, but thankfully it was safe at least for a few days as I had to go there to see Habib’s mother and his step-father, and Mohammed and I stood outside one of those forbidding solid ten-feet tall stucco walls near the site where his son was gunned down so cruelly by the soldiers and he pointed out the exact spot where he had been told Haider had died. I asked the authorities and I was granted permission to pay two Baghdad muralists in need of work to create a long mural all along that wall, over thirty feet by six feet, and they are still working on it, as the heat of summer and the bombing scares make for limited safety along that route, but they have vowed to continue with it as long as it takes, and they need the work, and such talent as they could be creating great things if the country were not in such turmoil, and such talent must not be wasted. And so Mohammed, who wears a suit most days even when he does not leave his home, was there in his gray suit, reddish tie, his white beard full around the neck, his head of hair very gray, arms held behind his back, and I there in slacks and long sleeve shirt bought at a Baghdad souq for what you might pay at an American garage sale on the weekend, and my bodyguard in long white robe and black jacket, cap on his head, and an official of the government with us for our protection or perhaps to keep his superiors informed of what I was doing, of that I’m not too sure, and how Iraq veers like a faint injured man teetering toward the evils of the Saddam era when one in five informed on everyone else and no one’s rights were respected by the government.”

Rafae commented on whether America too was becoming prone to allowing government surveillance of the peace movement, “…too much government intrusion in our lives,” he said.

Omar had arranged for a small feast his last week in August before returning to the states.

The air-conditioning was working and his Basrah home had a banquet room on the east side of the ground floor – in addition to the formal dining room – that could hold about fifty guests. The walls were of brick, with intricate archways, recesses, lighted electric wall sconces, pictures made of ornate inlaid wood pieces, and a buffet table with Iraqi pottery holding the food. They had scheduled it for lunchtime, it being dangerous after six p.m. to be out in Basrah.

Omar had worn brown slacks and a golden yellow knit shirt, standing in front of the table with Salim, his driver since 2004 who also worked as one of the foremen, dressed in blue and white striped shirt and blue jeans, Salim’s right hand on Omar’s right shoulder as the other guests, the men mostly in white short-sleeved shirts, their children and wives milling about the table sampling the food, Omar with his dark brown moustache showing a few gray hairs, his eyes filled with hope and happiness as the guests enjoyed themselves and talked about the upcoming month of Ramadan.

“I would like to get a license to import some of the Iraqi pottery being made today,” Omar said, “as it is exquisite and can be bought there for a fraction of what you would pay for similar work in the states. But I would not want to be accused of trying to exploit the ceramists over there. It’s amazing how much good artwork is being created there and no one to buy any of it.”

In fact, Omar had begun negotiating just before leaving Basrah with a company that would provide him with kilns and clay so that he could set up a workshop on the grounds of his property where potters could work at their leisure. “I would like to take it up myself,” Omar told Rafae and the others. “Something to get my hands into and I can see row after row of new vases and jars waiting for the next pair of hands to add the right paint.”

“How do the women of Basrah dress these days?” Jamme asked. “Are they wearing the hijab?”

“Many of them, yes,” Omar said. “But at my buffet that day, several of the wives were in long black dresses with embroidery, their hair styled, not wearing any head covering, red lipstick, a few with white scarves around their heads and necks revealing only their faces and quite happy to be there however they were dressed. And rarely does a woman or girl venture out without a male escort anywhere in parts of Basrah, and Baghdad, so many threats, kidnappings, assaults, quite traumatic for them.”

Omar had several vehicles that he owned in Basrah, including a burgundy red 2005 SUV with aluminum alloy wheels, leather seats, in which a gifted glassman had installed bullet-proof front and rear windshields, “and we’re working on how to get bullet-proof side windows,” Omar told his American friends.

“That must be hard to cope with,” Abdul-Salim said. “The daily threats.”

“Oh you get some worried looks these days all over southern Iraq,” Omar said. “One of my tradesman, Kasem, looks rather bewildered every night when he has to leave my house to venture back onto the streets of Basrah.”

“How sad,” Jamme said.

“Oh but there are bright spots even in daily life in Iraq,” Omar said. He then told them about a cruise he had taken earlier in the spring with another Iraqi professor – Maher Alsamarai – from the port of Uum Qasr to Dubai for a weekend.

Omar and Maher had sat in the dining room of the ferryboat next to a window with marble columns and draperies of pastel blue and muted yellow. They were at a wooden table for four, white and cobalt-blue-trimmed china set out on trays, four golden yellow swivel chairs, Omar in a white short-sleeve shirt and navy blue dress slacks, Maher in a lavender and light pastel shirt, smiling and chatting about Dubai and the bright sunlight on the blue waters. Maher had silver streaks in his hair.

Their hands casually resting atop the dining table after they had finished eating, they lingered a while enjoying the leisurely atmosphere and the view out the large plate glass windows. This had occurred in the summer of 2006. It was in the dining room on the cruise ship that Omar had met Melinda Ellen Kramer, whose work with an NGO in the marshlands since 2003 had brought her in contact with Omar’s native village at one point. They had been introduced by Catherine Carlisle of the BBC, who was finishing a three month assignment in Iraq and was heading to Dubai for more reporting before returning to the UK.

Omar and Melinda had met for dinner twice in Dubai after reaching the U.A.E, both times at Omar’s hotel.

Upon her return to Iraq late in 2006, she had visited him in Basrah after spending several months back in Austin, Texas, her home town, taking care of professional business.

By the summer of 2007, after several more visits – Omar visiting her in the marshlands where she was still involved in relief work, and she visiting him in Basrah as well as in Baghdad where she had met Habib and his wife Noor and their friends - they had become engaged. He had spent three days before the beginning of the fall 2007 semester with her in Austin, living with her at her home, meeting her son and daughter, among others.

“And Dubai,” Omar said to Rafae and the others. “How lavish all the glass buildings everywhere, glass and gleaming new metal buildings. So unlike the white stucco exteriors of apartment houses – the nine and ten story genre built in much of Iraq before, during, and - I suppose - after Saddam.”

“How do they survive without air-conditioning in those high rises?” Jamme asked.

“How indeed,” Omar said. “Some cities have more electricity than others. You see ceramic tile sidewalks and old-fashioned austere high-rise apartments in port cities and Mosul and of course Baghdad, Basra, and wonder how people can survive in them during the summer.

“White does help reflect the sun’s heat,” Omar said. “A major Sumerian adaptation to be sure, utilizing white. I know an elderly sheik whose home I visited from time to time in Basrah these last three years, and he prefers white to anything: white robes – satin – white turban with black headband, and his white beard. His office has; you guessed it; white walls, a large gleaming polished wooden desk, huge ceramic vase atop a pedestal with purple cover, papers set out, double doors to the main part of his home, and he says he would not go out in the heat for anything, even when the air-conditioning is off, it’s simply unbearable outdoors at the peak of summer.

“I must admit there are days when the weather is nice when I would love to just sit on the floor at some institute for learning or madrassa with one of my Muslim friends and chat, just as we are doing now, trying to decode the complexity of some ancient calligraphy on the wall that spirals to infinity.”

“I love Arabic calligraphy,” Jamme said. “It’s incredible how they could get transported and create such lavish paintings based on letters from the Arab alphabet.”

“One of my colleagues from the University of Chicago plans to visit campus next month, to speak in one of my classes, and he is one of the leading experts in the field,” Omar said. “He even dresses the part.”

“Dresses the part?” Jamme asked.

“I heard that scientists have discovered that Arabic calligraphists from centuries ago had actually figured out the complex math of fractals, in order to complete their designs,” Lila said.

“I read that also,” Omar said.

“So you see math and language united in the art of calligraphy,” Abdul-Salam said.

“Could you show us the word ‘design’ in Arabic?” Jamme asked.

“Noun or verb?” Omar asked.

“Noun first,” Jamme said.

Omar wrote out in large letters on his note pad:

He began writing again.

At that moment in the office of the chief of police of one of the suburbs of Detroit, Tony Lyeforth and Paul Beltmann – now senior officials with the NSA - were seated around the desk in conversation with the police chief, as well as Chief of Detectives Cross, and communications liaison office Azzam Ali abd al-Rubayi.

“You’re sure after this Aboudi buddy again, aren’t you?” the chief said, looking Beltmann in the eye and sipping some hot coffee.

“Coffee bars tend to attract the masculine side of the Arab-American experience as we now know it,” Lyeforth said, with Beltmann nodding in agreement. “Coffee bars favor men, Islam favors men, Aboudi meets other Arab-American men in that coffee bar….”

“Trendy, pricey place too,” the chief said. “My wife and I tried it out and got hammered for over twenty bucks for some hot coffee and pastries last week.”

“Including the tip?” Cross asked.

“Certo,” the chief said. “That’s Italian for ‘of course’.” Looking at Beltmann again, his expression rather suspicious: “Had an Italian foreign exchange student for our waiter and he kept going on, whenever Sheila would ask for another napkin or cream, ‘certo, certo, signora’ so many times I have it memorized and Sheila, can you believe it, was so impressed by his fractured English talking about the beauty of Rome that she’s already booked a vacation there for next May at one of those online sites.”

“Did you like the coffee?” al-Rubayi asked.

“Lei ha amato il caffè?” the chief said. “That’s the other phrase Luigi or whatever his name kept saying in Italian, and Sheila kept nodding and cooing about how rich the taste. Did you like the coffee? Lei ha amato il caffe?”

“Certo,” Cross said.

“All right,” Beltmann said.

“Gotta give me some travel tips about Italy,” the chief said to the two NSA officials. “Been there from what I heard.”

“Been there when Aboudi was in Rome four years ago, weren’t we Paul?” Lyeforth said.

“Quelli erano i giorni,” Beltmann said.

“Huh?” Cross said.

“Those were the days,” Beltmann said. “Thought buddy Omar would be our ticket to finesse America’s way to the Iraqi heart.”

“Should have tried a coffee bar,” the chief said.

“Huh?” Lyeforth said.

“The American coffee bar,” the chief said. “Should have tried to import about a thousand of those places up and down that stinky desert with the two Biblical rivers and you would have had episode after episode of trendy Iraqis so obsessed with swilling expensive American coffee they wouldn’t have had time for all that other stuff.”

“Other stuff?” al-Rubayi said.

“The chaos, the bombings,” the chief said. “The Iraqi al-Qaeda.”

“Sure,” Lyeforth said, raising his eyebrows and staring at Beltmann, whose expression turned somber.

“You never know until you try,” the chief said. “Anyway, so you’ve got another informant spying on Sahib Aboudi now that he’s back from Iraq. And you’re worried he’s going to concoct some Muslim rebellion in the states, is that it?”

“Hardly,” Lyeforth said.

“Then why did you call this meeting?” the chief asked. “I have four young and eager sergeants secretly trained by the FBI in counter-terrorism just salivating like love-starved coeds to pick up Aboudi once he crosses the city limits into our pleasant upscale hamlet here and to question him, interview him if you will, about all and why and if he plans something illegal.”

“I wouldn’t,” Lyeforth said.

“Why not?” Cross asked.

“We have no proof as yet,” Beltmann said.

“Then what is this?” the chief asked.

“The informant thinks Aboudi is a lightning rod for Arab foreign exchange students at Michigan University who oppose the war,” Lyeforth said. “She’s spoken with students from some of his graduate seminars who refer to him like a great prophet, or a mystic, and she thinks they will do anything he says.”

“Including what?” Cross asked.

“Anything?” al-Rubayi said.

“I need to interrupt here,” the chief said. “Do you mean you don’t suspect Aboudi of planning anything illegal?”

“No,” Lyeforth said.

“No you don’t suspect him, or no, I’m wrong and you do suspect him?” the chief said.

“No, we don’t,” Lyeforth said.

“No what?” Beltmann said.

“Know what,” the chief said, “you guys are really obsessed about Senhor Omar, aren’t you?”

“Senhor?” Cross said.

“Portuguese,” the chief said. “One of my four counter-terrorism-trained young go-getters swears we have to get knowledgeable about training in all kinds of languages, to speak what the terrorist speaks, and so I’ve got a list of how to say ‘mister’ in twenty, no, thirty dialects and languages so if I hear some foreign-looking clever sneak out on the streets of our overly-protective community saying, ‘De mijnheer’ – that’s in Dutch, then I take his photo with my cell phone and instantly email it by attachment to the Dutch secret police and they…”

“The Dutch have a secret police?” al-Rubayi said.

“Don’t they?” the chief asked, looking at Lyeforth and Beltmann.

“If they do, it’s a secret to us,” Lyeforth said.

“Too liberal for you, the Dutch, huh?” the chief said.

Lyeforth and Beltmann remained silent.

“No,” Lyeforth said, “we do not suspect him of plotting a crime.”

“Then why are you wasting my time and that of this fine upstanding Arab-American two-way radio fiend, Mohammed al-Rubayi,” the chief began.

“Azzam Ali,” al-Rubayi said, looking rather upset. “Watch it.”

“If you don’t want us to detain Aboudi when he drives his new Lexus into town,” the chief began.

“He has a Lexus?” Cross said.

“Whatever,” the chief said. “If you don’t want us to detain him or deport him or report him to the FBI, then what do you want?” the chief asked.

“All right then,” Beltmann said. “This is why.”

Back in the coffee bar on Main Street in Ann Arbor, Omar was saying how enigmatic that America could delude itself that the war in Iraq was anything other than a war crime and reprehensible in human history.

“It is an enigma that history could hardly solve in another thousand years,” Omar said, “how a fool from Texas who stumbled into the Presidency could have lured America and the British – and who hardly needed a push, let alone a shove, to join the invasion – into a senseless war in this age of such incredible technology, learning, scientific advances, a world with standards of living so high they make the affluent look like gods compared to the abject suffering into which Iraqis have plunged, and yet who can solve this enigma?”

“And if it could be solved?” Jamme said.

“An enigmas so profound, this illegal war and its conception, it will loom as one of the great paradoxes of history,” Omar said.

“Almost like a charade,” Abdul-Salam said, “the antics of Bush and his military henchmen posturing and posing for the cameras, defending the war to its uttermost abject bottom.”

“Sadly,” Omar said, “bottomless, all the ruin there in Iraq, like a bottomless pit. If only Bush had learned the meaning of peace, in any language.”

“How do you mean?” Lila asked.

“That’s Swedish,” Lila said smiling.

“Un nombre prestado de las nubes,” Omar said.

“Ein Name geborgt von den Wolken,” Abdul-Salam said.

Omar and his friends chatted another fifteen minutes or so before he excused himself saying he must begin preparing for a faculty meeting.

On leaving he mentioned, “They plan a production of THE RIDDLE by Karim al-Din Muhammed at the Charade Repertory Theatre later this fall.”

“Oh,” Lila said, “I’ve heard of it.”

“My son Louis and his partner saw it last summer, at the premiere in Washington, and you must see it.”

“A must-see,” Jamme said, smiling.

“From what Louis said, yes, a must-see.”

“Then we must,” Rafae said.

Omar walked out onto the sidewalk, back to his car, and drove back to the campus.

Back in the chief’s office in the Detroit suburb.

“So that’s why,” the chief said as Lyeforth and Beltmann stood up to leave. “Uncanny, and yes, rather disturbing. That would be a serious breach, if his son-in-law is divulging privileged…”

“Not just privileged,” Lyeforth said. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt. But not just privileged information. Classified, since Larry McIntire has the highest security clearance on the congressman’s staff.”

“So you’re telling us,” the chief said, “and now we’re all going to be under surveillance now that we know, aren’t we?”

“No,” Lyeforth said.

“No, we are, or no, we aren’t?” the chief said.

“No,” Beltmann said, “you are not going to be under surveillance.”

“So you were telling us,” Cross said, “that your NSA colleague is intentionally sending classified reports to McIntire – sometimes at his request, sometimes not at his request in order to tempt him further, yes – on matters that could pertain to his partner Louis, Aboudi’s son, to see if McIntire will repeat any of it to his lover, legally married in Canada but not here, by way of entrapment.”

“Not so much as entrapment,” Lyeforth said. “Undercover investigations are the norm in Washington, for many years. We’re testing McIntire, yes; if he breaks the law, and it is breaking the law for him to reveal anything that relates to national security that comes over his desk, even to his young Catholic anti-war rebel of a husband, and if we can determine he has broken the law, that Louis has repeated to Omar who repeats it to his friend Hunarfar who somehow gets the message to that confirmed, unquestionably terrorist-driven brother of his –Akbar - then yes, McIntire could become as famous as others once members of the Washington elite who fell into disgrace and occasionally into Federal prison due to playing quick and dirty with the law, since the fight against terrorism has no room for the casual gossip of the socially prominent among us, even if they think being married in Canada gives their gay spouse immunity from testifying under oath in U.S. Federal Court, which it does not.”

“As far as we know,” Beltmann said.

“As far as we know then,” the chief said, “Aboudi could drop a casual remark at one of these coffee house macho male dominance triumphs that leads us to believe his son Louis repeated what senior staffer Larry should never have dared breathe, even when the two of them were embracing in bed in the middle of the night.”

“Something like that,” Lyeforth said. “America doesn’t stop being a target for terrorists in the middle of the night.”

Copyright 2008 by David Lawrence Cade

All rights reserved

David Lawrence Cade

1208 S. Delaware

Bartlesville, OK 74003

(918) 336-6418