John Case - Ghost Dancer aka Dance of Death

The younger man, whose name was Bobojon Simoni, screwed his face into a squint, and nodded. “I know. It’s too bright.”

The older man shook his head. “I meant the glass. If there was a car bomb…”

Bobojon nibbled on a chunk of popcorn chicken, then wiped his hands with a paper napkin. “That was a long time ago. No one’s fighting now. It’s different.” He balled up the napkin and dropped it on the tray.

His uncle grunted. “It’s always different, ” he said, “until something goes off.”

Bo chuckled. He would like to have said something clever, but that wasn’t his way and, besides, there was too much noise. A baby wailed in the center of the restaurant. Behind the counter, the manager berated a teary-eyed cashier, while a mix tape of Tony Bennett and Oum Kalthoum floated above the tables.

The older man lifted his chin toward a poster of the KFC colonel, plastered against the window. “You think he’s a Jew?”

Bo glanced around. “Who?”

His uncle nodded at the poster. “The owner. He has the lips of a Jew.”

Bo shrugged. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and a pair of carefully ironed Lucky Brand jeans. Mephisto loafers and a Patek-Philippe watch completed the ensemble, all of which had been bought the week before at a shopping mall a few blocks from his new apartment in Berlin.

“If he’s a Jew,” his uncle continued, “the meat’s probably halal.”

Like he cares, Bo thought. But what he said was: “Right.” In fact, Bo didn’t know a whole lot about Jews. He’d heard there were a couple in Allenwood, but…

“Let’s walk,” his uncle said, suddenly disgusted.

Outside, Zero and Khalid sat in the BMW, smoking cigarettes. Seeing Aamm Hakim leave the restaurant with his nephew, they scrambled out of the car to fall in step behind. Nineteen years old, they dressed alike in short-sleeved shirts, running shoes, and jeans. Zero carried a brown paper bag with a grease stain on its side. Khalid swaggered beside him, a Diadora gym bag hanging from a strap over his shoulder. Since they’d already eaten and weren’t going to a soccer match, Bo was pretty sure that the bags held something heavier than sandwiches and a jockstrap.

It was a beautiful day. But then, it was always a beautiful day in Beirut. Just down the coast, near the Summerland resort, he could see windsurfers zipping back and forth under a cloudless sky.

He and his uncle walked arm in arm, heads bent in conversation, moving toward the city’s improbable Ferris wheel, past vendors of coconuts and corn on the cob. It was Sunday, and the Corniche was mobbed. There were kids on Rollerblades, lovers and joggers. Girls in abbayas, girls in miniskirts. Syrian commandos lounged against the seawall, preening in their tiger stripes.

“ Berlin, it’s okay for you?”

Bo nodded. “Yeah.”

His uncle smiled. “What do you like best about it?”

“The work.”

“Of course you like the work,” his uncle said. “I mean, besides the work.”

Bo shrugged. Finally, he said: “The architecture.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I like it. It’s new.”

His uncle walked with his eyes on the ground, his brow furrowed in thought. “And the pussy?”

Bo nearly choked.

His uncle smiled. “In Berlin,” he said, “it’s crazy pussy!” He took Bo by the arm. “I am told this.”

Bo couldn’t believe it. The color rose in his cheeks. He looked away, mumbling something that even he didn’t understand.

His uncle laughed and pulled him closer. Suddenly, he was serious. “Find a girlfriend,” he ordered. “German, Dutch – whatever. Take her out. Be seen with her. And get rid of the beard.”

Bo was astonished. “But… it’s haram !”

His uncle shook his head. “Do what I tell you. And stay away from the mosques. They’re filled with informants.”

It took him a second, but then he understood. And smiled. “Okay,” he said.

“Your friend – Wilson – he’s a kaffir ?”

“Well…” Bo let the sentence die. There were nicer ways to say that Wilson wasn’t a Muslim.

His uncle threw him an impatient look. “You trust him?”

“Yes.”

Hakim looked skeptical. “A Christian?”

“He’s not a Christian. He’s not anything at all.”

His uncle scowled. “Everyone is something.”

Bo shook his head a second time. “With him, it’s different. He’s not religious.”

“Which makes Mr. Wilson… what?”

Bo thought about it. Finally, he said, “A bomb.”

Hakim smiled. He liked melodrama. “What kind of bomb?”

“A ‘smart’ bomb.”

The answer seemed to please his uncle, because he stopped at an ice-cream cart to buy each of them a Dove Bar. When they resumed walking, Hakim asked, “But this bomb of yours, why does he want to help us?”

“Because he’s angry.”

Hakim scoffed. “Everyone’s angry.”

“I know, but… Wilson is angry in the right way. We want the same thing.”

A dismissive puff of air fell from his uncle’s lips, as he looked down and shook his head. “I can’t believe you’d trust an American.”

“He’s not an American. I mean, he is, but he isn’t. Wilson ’s people, they’re like us.”

“You mean they’re poor.”

Bo shook his head. “Not just poor…” They paused to watch an Israeli jet slide across the sky, beyond the reach of the antiaircraft guns hidden in the slums. Nearby, a cloud of pigeons fell upon an old woman with a small bag of corn. “They’re like we used to be. Desert people.”

His uncle scoffed.

“They lived in tents!” Bo insisted.

“You see too many films.”

His nephew shrugged. “It was a long time ago. But they remember. Just as we do.” Bo was not a man with a large vocabulary, or he might have added “figuratively speaking.” Because, of course, no one in his family had ever lived in a tent, unless you counted refugee tents set up by the Red Cross. Bo’s father was a Cairene laborer who’d emigrated to Albania after the Sixty-seven War. He’d grown up in a two-room flat in a slum on the outskirts of Cairo. So he was an Arab, yes, but not the kind who rode horses or hunted with falcons. As for his mother, well… she was the fifth daughter of an Albanian farmer. Muslim, yes. Arab, no.

Still, he remembered.

Aamm Hakim sunk his teeth into the Dove Bar’s chocolate plating, and resumed walking. “This Wilson – tell me again how long you’ve known him.”

There was no hesitation: “Four years, eight months, three days.”

“Not so long, then.”

Bo chuckled. Bitterly. “It seemed like a long time. Anyway, it was 24/7. We might as well have been married.”

It was his uncle’s turn to shrug. “He’ll have to be tested. I won’t work with a crazy man!”

“He’s not crazy.”

Hakim gave his nephew a skeptical look. “Not even a little?”

Bo grinned. “Well, maybe a little.”

His uncle grunted an I-told-you-so. “In what way?”

“It’s just a small thing,” Bo explained, “but-”

“What?”

“Sometimes, he thinks he’s a character in a novel.”

Hakim stared at him, nonplussed. He wasn’t quite sure just what it was that his nephew was saying. “A novel?” he asked.

Bo nodded.

“You mean, like this man, Mahfouz? A novel like one of his?”

Bo bit into his Dove Bar, savoring the interplay of chocolate on vanilla. “No, Uncle. Nothing as good as that.”

The first thing Jack Wilson did when he got to Washington was take a bath. Which was strange. Because baths had never been his thing, not at all. But after nine years of showering under surveillance, the prospect of a long hot soak by himself was irresistible.