Robert Tanenbaum - Counterplay

Why in such an oblique way? Karp had replied leaning back in his chair and putting his size fourteens up on the desk. Why not just write it out? Why take a chance that your dim old dad wouldn’t be able to decipher the message? He enjoyed verbally sparring with his insightful daughter; she could hold her own in any debate, even if he found her reliance on the existence of angels and demons to explain human behavior long on emotion but short on facts.

Maybe the demon wouldn’t let him, she’d replied slowly. Maybe he had to sort of “sneak” it out.

Secrets from the devil? I didn’t think that was possible, Karp had teased and been rewarded with a Bronx cheer over the phone. Um…I don’t think your rebuttal would hold up in court.

Well, you can just keep those blinders on, buddy, and refuse to see that there’s more to the rather unusual series of events that have followed this family like a plague of locusts than mere chance, Lucy scolded. Hell, call us the Koincidence-spelled with a K-Karps. Or accept that we’ve been selected to play a large, uncomfortable, and maybe even fatal role in a bigger plan that is unfolding all around us.

I see, “All the world’s a stage…And all the men and women merely players,” Karp said.

Yes, that’s sort of it. “They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts,” Lucy said, shooting the Shakespeare right back at him.

Perhaps, Karp laughed. But I believe that for the most part-with some weight given to behavior caused by nature or nurture-a man chooses the parts he plays. It’s the basis of the legal system’s insanity rulings. People choose to do good things, and other people, at least those who are not legally insane, CHOOSE to do bad things. I don’t discount at all the existence of God, some sort of creative, even moral force in the universe. Nor do I discount the truth that “Bad things happen to good people” for no explicable reason, and we can call that evil, if you like-the sort of evil that tortured and killed my mother with cancer. But I think the vast majority of evil in this world is committed by people who think it’s okay to hurt other people. The worst of them we call sociopaths, men like Andrew Kane, who certainly recognize that there is a difference between right and wrong; they just choose to ignore it for their own gratification, whether it’s rape, murder, or all of the above. Kane chose the role he is playing, which makes him guilty, not insane.

In a limited sense, yes, Lucy replied, determined to match him monologue for monologue. But just because people choose a role for whatever reason-money, power, whatever else turns Mr. Kane on-it doesn’t necessarily mean they understand how their part will play out in the end. Judas chose to betray Jesus, but did he know that by doing so he caused the most far-reaching social and spiritual revolution ever? But let’s say you’re right…maybe there’s no demon that possessed Hans Lichner and there never was that spark inside of him. That it’s all bullshit. Maybe he chose to play the part of a monster who did that to little boys…but when he threw the rosaries into the grave, was he choosing to be the instrument for justice that brought down his master, Andrew Kane? Because that’s what happened. Or maybe there was something left of the divine in him that made him do it in order to alter the role his conscious mind, or the demon, chose?

Or maybe it was just a part of his personality disorder, Karp countered. Maybe it just fed his ego to say, “I did what I wanted, and I want you to know it was me and not some other brute. And I’m leaving this clue because you’re too stupid and weak to catch me anyway.”…And by the way, you just contradicted yourself.

How’s that? Lucy replied, a little testily he noticed.

You said that this “spark of the divine” in him CHOSE to assume a different role for good, Karp said. But earlier, you were arguing that it’s all some sort of enormous play that’s already been written, that we’ve already been cast, and we’re just playing out our parts…no choice in the matter.

No contradiction. You’re just not giving God enough credit to anticipate where free will would take us, Lucy said smugly. He works in mysterious ways, you know.

Lucy had ended the debate with a parting shot at his “advanced age” from the As You Like It soliloquy they’d been tossing back and forth. I guess Old Bill knew what he was saying when he wrote, the “Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion. Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” Sound familiar, old man? Oops, Ned’s here, gotta go, love you, Daddy.

Karp picked up the evidence bag containing the rosary beads. He’d handled a lot of murder weapons in his career-axes, guns, daggers, golf clubs, an oil-soaked rag that had been stuffed down a bookie’s throat suffocating him and then lit on fire…you name it, it had been used to commit homicide. But there was something about the rosary beads, perhaps the horrible irony that caused the skin on his hand to crawl as he put the bag back down.

Jaxon had been livid when he returned from California. Only a few people were supposed to know Fey was there, he sputtered in Karp’s office. Even the warden only knew that the old man was under the Witness Protection Program. Other than that, a couple of people in my agency knew-but not Grover, who would have been the logical choice for traitor. So that leaves me with another mole and very few people I can trust.

What about the Homeland Security guys? Karp asked. Did any of them know?

Jaxon looked like he was going to say something and then thought better of it. I don’t really know what they know, he said. They’re worse than the CIA with the “need-to-know” stuff. I don’t even know what kind of access they have to FBI files-some of this stuff is being handled at the very top, director to director, and us low-level flunkies are not privy to those conversations…. But I’d say no simply because they didn’t get into this until after Kane’s escape and the connection to Samira Azzam was made…. And considering Grover was one of mine, it would be pretty ballsy of me to point the finger at some other agency.

Hoping it would lift Jaxon’s spirits, Karp presented him with a copy of the photograph of Samira Azzam given to him the night before by his uncle. Apparently, the Israelis can vouch for its authenticity, he said.

This could be invaluable, Jaxon said. Where did you get it?

I’m not at liberty to say at the moment, Karp replied. He didn’t feel like explaining his relationship with a Brooklyn crime family to an FBI agent, even one with whom he’d been friends for years. But this same person has a theory that Kane and Azzam might be after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Jaxon had stared at Karp like he’d just told him the name of the man on the grassy knoll in Dallas. I’m really not supposed to say anything about this, but between you and me that scenario has emerged as the number-one theory. Apparently, the terrorist who was killed when Kane escaped, Akhmed Kadyrov, had a telephone number in his pocket-no name or anything else with it, but it rings into the office of the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations. Maybe that means something, maybe not. But there’s also been some chatter on internet websites we monitor that al Qaeda has something big planned in the United States for September, which is when Putin is scheduled to speak.