Collision

Jackie pulled the knife from its leg sheath. “Let me tell you some of the ways my da got the Proddy bastards and the traitors in Belfast to talk when they were sure they wouldn’t. See, they’d get brought down to his basement for a cup of tea and a nice long chat. If the chat went bad, Da would get out the knives.”

Teach didn’t move. Jackie thought if he leaned forward and kissed her he’d feel the fear in her lips.

“But see, it’d be worse for Pilgrim’s girl. Back in Belfast, when the stupid men started talking, my da stopped cutting their faces and their privates. The knife’s work was done. But I don’t want her to talk. There’s nothing she can tell me to save herself.” He turned the knife and its glint caught the dim light above her bed. “I only want her to hurt.”

Jackie began a recitation that chilled Teach’s blood, painted horrors in her mind so that she flinched from his soft whisper. But still she shook her head.

So Jackie started to demonstrate.

Khaled’s Report-New Orleans

On Sunday, we start our work. If I have not ruined everything.

I am terrified because I fear I have jeopardized all my training, all my sacrifice. I was unprepared for random chance. Today I walked through the French Quarter on one of my exercises, trying to determine who is following me and how I can lose them in the crowds. I am sure that the crowds are smaller than normal, since Katrina, but the streets still throng here with happy Americans, hazed on their crimson hurricanes of liquor and fruit juice or their canned beers.

I entered my own haze today. Halfway through my exercise with my trainers, I saw someone I know, from home in Beirut. A girl, named Roula, a cousin of a good friend. I remember hearing that she was studying architecture at Rice University in Houston. One would hope she would be hard at her studies. But no, here she is, walking with a trio of blond American girls, looking very American herself in jeans and a sky blue polo shirt and a set of bangle bracelets. She is lovely, walking with these American beauties, tucking a lock of her dark hair behind her ear. I glance at her twice, once in shock and the second time to be sure it is her. I turn my head but she has sensed my stare and she turns.

She won’t recognize me, I hope, and I duck my head and turn away abruptly to study a display of junky T-shirts for tourists in a store window.

“Khaled?” I hear her voice call, rising in surprise at the end.

No.

I turn and start to walk away and then she says it again, loudly, so I stop. Glance back at her. She smiles at me in recognition.

“Khaled, hello, how are you?”

“Fine,” I say. “How are you, Roula, what are you doing here?” The words all feel woolly in my mouth.

“I’m visiting for the weekend with school friends.” She gestures back at the American beauties, who look at me and through me, a skinny Arab boy with the awkwardness of an engineering student and therefore of minimal interest to them.

“Ah,” I say. My watchers-I can see them now, they don’t even try to hide from me-are watching me talk to this girl. I wonder what that will mean for her. I have an urge to run.

“What are you doing here?”

I am supposed to be in Switzerland, studying finance. “Ah, well, my advisor at my school-I’m at the University of Geneva-is giving a speech at Tulane, and I came with him.” The explanation rings hollow to me, but I force a smile behind it and gesture at the window full of junky T-shirts. “You caught me in an unacademic moment.”

Roula laughs. “Well, how long are you in town?”

“I leave Sunday.”

“So do we.” And then, of course, in the manner of my people, she begins to inquire about my mother, my cousins-she knows my brothers and my father are dead and she says nothing of them.

I answer quickly, ask after her own family, then take refuge in consulting my watch. “Well, this was a lovely surprise, Roula, but I must get back to the campus. I didn’t give myself enough time to explore.” I tender an awkward grin.

She gives me a bright smile. “Well, it was nice to see you, Khaled.”

“Good to see you, too.” I turn and walk away and I don’t look back. My outing, my training run, is ruined. Two blocks further I risk a glance. There were two trackers following me, and now there is only the one. The other tracker is, of course, now shadowing Roula.

I am brought back to the house, questioned thoroughly. I explain she is a friend from home, studying architecture in America. That she is harmless.

“But you are not supposed to be here,” the masters say to me. “What if she mentions to her family, to her friends, that she saw you here?”

“I gave her a story consistent with my cover,” I said, and they laugh, not because it is funny. I keep hoping they will tell me this is a test, that Roula is part of the organization. But they give no such reassurance.

“What should I have done?” I say, miserable.

“You don’t talk to her. You walk away, you get away from her.”

“But she knew it was me. To run would increase her suspicion-”