Terrorist - A Novel Part 13

Mr. Levy destroys the moment, saying, "Well, what else can we talk about? Giants Stadium. Did you catch the Jets game yesterday? When that kid Carter fumbled the kickoff, I thought to myself, Here we go again, just like last season. Here we go again, just like last season. But no, they pulled it out, thirty-one to twenty-four, though you couldn't relax until that rookie safety Coleman came up with the interception in the last minute of the Bengals' final drive." This is presumably Jewish comedy, which Ahmad ignores. In a more sincere voice, Levy says, "I can't believe you're seriously intending to kill hundreds of innocent people." But no, they pulled it out, thirty-one to twenty-four, though you couldn't relax until that rookie safety Coleman came up with the interception in the last minute of the Bengals' final drive." This is presumably Jewish comedy, which Ahmad ignores. In a more sincere voice, Levy says, "I can't believe you're seriously intending to kill hundreds of innocent people."

"Who says unbelief is innocent? Unbelievers say that. G.o.d says, in the Qur'an, Be ruthless to unbelievers. Be ruthless to unbelievers. Burn them, crush them, because they have forgotten G.o.d. They think to be themselves is sufficient. They love this present life more than the next." Burn them, crush them, because they have forgotten G.o.d. They think to be themselves is sufficient. They love this present life more than the next."

"So kill them now. That seems pretty severe."

"It would to you, of course. You are a lapsed Jew, I believe. You believe nothing. In the third sura of the Qur'an it says that not all the gold in the world can ransom those who once believed and now disbelieve, and that G.o.d will never accept their repentance."

Mr. Levy sighs. Ahmad can hear moisture, little droplets of fear, rattle in his breath. "Yeah, well, there's a lot of repulsive and ridiculous stuff in the Torah, too. Plagues, ma.s.sacres, straight from Yahweh to you. Tribes that weren't lucky enough to be chosen-put them under the ban, show them no mercy. They hadn't quite worked out h.e.l.l yet, that came with the Christians. Wise up-the priests try to control people through fear. Conjure up h.e.l.l-the oldest scare tactic in the world. Next to torture. h.e.l.l is is torture, basically. You really can buy into all this? G.o.d as supreme torturer? G.o.d as the King of genocide?" torture, basically. You really can buy into all this? G.o.d as supreme torturer? G.o.d as the King of genocide?"

"As the note attached to Charlie said, He will not deny us our recompense. You mention the Torah, in your own tradition. The Prophet had many good words for Abraham. I am interested: Did you ever believe? How did you fall away?"

"I was born fallen away. My father hated Judaism, and his father before him. They blamed religion for the world's misery-it reconciled people to their problems. Then they subscribed to another religion, Communism. But you don't want to hear this."

"I don't mind. It is good for us to seek agreement. Before Israel, Muslims and Jews were brothers-they belonged to the margins of the Christian world, the comic others in their funny clothes, entertainment for the Christians secure in their wealth, in their paper-white skins. Even with the oil, they despised us, cheating the Saudi princes of their people's birthright."

Mr. Levy heaves another sigh. "That's some 'us' you've worked up, Ahmad."

The traffic, already congested, slows and thickens. Signs Say NORTH BERGEN, SECAUCUS, WEEHAWKEN, ROUTE 495, to the Lincoln tunnel. Though he has never done this before, with or without Charlie, Ahmad follows the signs easily, even as 495, at a spasmodic crawl, performs a complete loop, bringing the traffic down the Weehawken cliff to the level of the river. He imagines a voice at his side saying, Easy does it, Madman. This isn 't rocket science. Easy does it, Madman. This isn 't rocket science.

As the roadway descends, mobs of other vehicles are being funneled in from feeder roads south and west. Ahmad sees above the car roofs their eventual common destination, a long face of tawny stonework and white tiles framing three round archways for two lanes each. A sign says trucks to right. Other trucks-brown UPS, yellow Ryder, motley tradesmen's pickups, tractor trailers chuffing and squealing as they tug forward their mammoth loads of fresh produce of the Garden State on its way to the kitchens of Manhattan-press right, working their way a few feet at a time, and braking.

"Now is the time to jump out, Mr. Levy. I can't stop once we're in the tunnel."

The guidance counselor puts his hands on his thighs in their mismatched gray trousers so that Ahmad can see he isn't going to touch the door. "I don't think I'll get out. We're in this together, son." His pose is brave, but his voice is hoa.r.s.e, weak.

"I'm not your son. If you try to get anyone's attention I'll set off the truck right here, in the traffic jam. It's not ideal but it'll kill plenty."

"I'm betting you won't set it off. You're too good a kid. Your mother used to tell me how you couldn't bear to step on a bug. You'd try to get it onto a piece of paper and throw it out the window."

"My mother and you seem to have had a lot of conversations."

"Consultations. We both want the best for you."

"I didn't like to step on bugs, but I don't like touching them either. I was afraid they'd bite, or defecate on my hand."

Mr. Levy laughs offensively; Ahmad insists, "Insects can defecate-we learned that in biology. They have digestive tracts and a.n.u.ses and everything, just like we do." His brain is racing, battering at its own limits. Because there seems no time left in which to argue, he accepts Mr. Levy's presence beside him as something immaterial, half real, like the sense he has always had of G.o.d being closer to him than a brother, of himself as a double being half unfolded, like a book with its two sets of pages bound together, odd and even, read and unread.

Surprisingly, here at the three mouths (Manny, Moe, and Jack) of the Lincoln Tunnel, there are trees and greenery: above the traffic jam, as its tangled seethe of brake lights and directional lights blink on and off, an earth embankment supports a triangular piece of mown gra.s.s. Ahmad thinks, This is the last piece of earth I will ever see, This is the last piece of earth I will ever see, this little lawn that no one ever stands on or picnics on or has ever noticed before with eyes about to go blind. this little lawn that no one ever stands on or picnics on or has ever noticed before with eyes about to go blind.

A few men and women in blue-gray uniforms are standing around the edges of the coagulated, forward-inching traffic flow. These police appear to be benign onlookers rather than supervisors, chatting in pairs and basking in the reborn, but still hazy, suns.h.i.+ne. For them this jam occurs every weekday in these hours, as much a part of nature as sunrise or tides or the planet's other mindless recurrences. One of die officers is a st.u.r.dy female, her cap allowing her bundled fair hair to show at her neck and ears, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pus.h.i.+ng against the s.h.i.+rt pockets of her uniform, with its badge and bandolier strap; she has attracted two uniformed males, one white and one black, their teeth exposed in l.u.s.tful smiles and their waists heavy with dangling weapons. Ahmad looks at his Timex: eight-fifty-five. Forty-five minutes have pa.s.sed in the truck. It will be over by nine-fifteen.

He has maneuvered the truck to the right, expertly using his mirrors to exploit the merest hesitation in a vehicle beside him. The jam, which felt for a while impenetrable, has sorted itself out into lanes feeding into die two Manhattan-bound tunnels. Suddenly, Ahmad sees, only a half-dozen vans and autos are between him and the right-hand tunnel entrance. There are a U-Haul ten-foot rented van and then a lunch wagon in quilted aluminum, all b.u.t.toned-up and latched against the moment when it unfolds its counter and activates its kitchen to feed unfastidious crowds from the sidewalk, and a number of ordinary autos, including a bronze-colored Volvo station wagon holding a family of zanj. zanj. With a courteous wave Ahmad bids the driver slip in ahead of him into the line that has formed. With a courteous wave Ahmad bids the driver slip in ahead of him into the line that has formed.

"You won't get by the booth," Mr. Levy warns him. He sounds tense, as if a bully is squeezing his chest from behind. "You look too young to be driving out of state."

But there is n.o.body in the booth built to hold a toll-taker. n.o.body. A green light flashes E-Z Pa.s.s PAID and Ahmad and the white truck are admitted to the tunnel.

The light inside is instantly strange: tiles not quite white but a sickly cream form close walls around the double stream of trucks and cars. The noise thus contained generates an echo, an undercurrent that slightly dampens it, as if with a watery distance. Ahmad feels himself already to be under water. He imagines the Hudson's black weight overhead, above the tiled ceiling. The artificial light in the tunnel is ample yet not cleansing; the vehicles move, at the speed of the slowest, through a kind of blanched darkness. There are trucks, some so vast the tops of their trailers seem to sc.r.a.pe the ceiling, but also automobiles that in the metallic scramble at the entrance have mixed themselves in with die trucks.

Through his winds.h.i.+eld Ahmad looks down through die back window of die bronze station wagon, a V90. Two children seated backward look up at him, hopeful for entertainment. They are not neglectfully dressed but in the same carefully careless, ironically gaudy clodies diat white children would be wearing on a family expedition. This black family was doing well, until Ahmad waved diem ahead of him into line.

After an initial spurt, a glide into the s.p.a.ce won at last by the untangling of die congestion outside the tunnel, die traffic flow is balked by some unseen obstacle or stickiness ahead. Smooth progress has proved to be an illusion. Drivers brake, brake lights glare. Ahmad finds himself not ungrateful for the slowdown, the stop and go. The downward slant of die road surface, which was unexpectedly rough and b.u.mpy for a surface that never saw the weather, threatened to carry him and his pa.s.senger and their load too quickly toward the tunnel's nadir, beyond which lay the theoretical weak point, two-thirds of the way through, where, he was advised, the tunnel will bend and be weakest. There his life will end. A s.h.i.+mmer like a heat mirage has possessed his mind's eye: diat triangle of tended yet unused gra.s.s hung above the tunnel mouth hangs in his mind. He had felt pity for it, so unvisited.

Clearing his dry diroat, he uses his voice. "I do not look young," he explains to Mr. Levy. "Men of our Middle-Eastern blood-we mature quicker dian Anglo-Saxons.

Charlie used to say I looked twenty-one and could drive the big rigs without anybody stopping me."

"That Charlie, he said a lot," Mr. Levy replies. His voice sounds tight, a hollow teacher's voice.

"Would you rather I did not talk, as the time draws near? It is possible that, though fallen away, you would like to pray."

One of the children in the back of the Volvo, a girl with her bushy hair up in two curious round b.a.l.l.s, like the ears of that cartoon mouse once so famous, is trying to attract Ahmad's attention with smiles; he ignores her.

"No," Levy says, as if even that monosyllable hurts to get out. "Talk away. Ask me something."

"Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d. Did your informant know what has happened to him, in this uncovering?"

"For now, he's vanished. But he won't make it back to Yemen, I can promise you. These p.r.i.c.ks can't get away with everything forever."

"He came to visit me last night. There seemed a sadness to him. But, then, there always has been. I think his learning is stronger than his faith."

"And he didn't tell you the jig was up? Charlie was found early yesterday morning."

"No. He a.s.sured me Charlie would meet me as planned. He wished me well."

"He left you in sole charge."

Ahmad hears the scornful tone and a.s.serts, "I am am in charge." He brags, "This morning, there were two strange cars at the Excellency lot. I saw a man who had the loud voice of authority talk on a cell phone. I saw him but he did not see me." in charge." He brags, "This morning, there were two strange cars at the Excellency lot. I saw a man who had the loud voice of authority talk on a cell phone. I saw him but he did not see me."

At the girl's instigation, she and her little brother press their faces against their curved window with pop eyes and contorted mouths, to make Ahmad smile, to achieve recognition.

Mr. Levy is slumping in his seat, feigning insouciance or cowering beneath images in his imagination. He says, "One more screw-up from your Uncle Sam. The fuzz was busy getting cups of coffee, telling dirty jokes to each other over the intercom, who knows? Listen. There's something I need to say to you. I f.u.c.ked your mother."

The tile walls, Ahmad notices, are glowing a rosy red in the reflection of so many taillights coming on as people repeatedly brake. Cars jerk forward a few feet, and brake again.

"We were sleeping together all summer," Levy goes on when Ahmad does not reply. "She was fantastic. I didn't know I could fall in love with anybody ever again-get all those juices flowing again."

"I think my mother," Ahmad tells him, after consideration, "sleeps with people easily. A nurse's aide is at home with the body, and she sees herself as a liberated modern person."

"So don't get all bent out of shape about it, you're telling me: it was no big deal. But it was to me. She became the world to me. Losing her, it's like I had a big operation. I hurt. hurt. I'm drinking too much. You can't understand." I'm drinking too much. You can't understand."

"No offense, sir, but do understand," Ahmad says, rather loftily. "I am not thrilled to think of my mother fornicating with a Jew."

Levy laughs-a coa.r.s.e bark. "Hey, come on, we're all Americans here. That's the idea, didn't they tell you that at Central High? Irish-Americans, African-Americans, Jewish-Americans; there are even Arab-Americans."

"Name one."

Levy is taken aback. "Omar Sharif," he says. He knows he could think of others in a less stressful situation. "Not American. Try again." "Uh-what was his name? Lew Alcindor." "Kareem Abdul-Jabbar," Ahmad corrects. "Thanks. Way before your time." "But a hero. He overcame great prejudice." "I think that was Jackie Robinson, but never mind." "Are we approaching the low point of the tunnel?" "How would I know? We're approaching everything, eventually. The tunnel doesn't give you much guidance, once you're in here. There used to be cops stationed along these walkways, but you never see them any more. It was discipline detail, but I guess the cops gave up on discipline when everybody else did."

Forward progress has been halted for some minutes. Cars behind them and in front of them begin to honk; the noise travels along the tiles like breath in a huge musical instrument. As if this halt gives them endless leisure, Ahmad turns and asks Jack Levy, "Have you ever, in your studies, read the Egyptian poet and political philosopher Sayyid Qutub? He came to the United States fifty years ago and was struck by the racial discrimination and the open wantonness between the s.e.xes. He concluded that no people is more distant than the American people from G.o.d and piety. But the concept of jahiliyya, jahiliyya, meaning the state of ignorance that existed before Mohammed, extends also to worldly Muslims and makes them legitimate targets for a.s.sa.s.sination." meaning the state of ignorance that existed before Mohammed, extends also to worldly Muslims and makes them legitimate targets for a.s.sa.s.sination."

"Sounds sensible. I'll a.s.sign him as optional reading, if I live. I've signed up to teach a course in civics this semester. I'm sick of sitting in that old equipment-closet all day trying to talk surly sociopaths out of dropping out. Let 'em drop out, is my new philosophy."

"Sir, I regret to say you will not live. In a few minutes I am going to see the face of G.o.d. My heart overflows with the expectation."

Their lane of traffic nudges forward. The children in the vehicle ahead have grown bored with trying to attract Ahmad's attention. The little boy, who wears a billed red cap and an imitation Yankees s.h.i.+rt with pinstripes, has curled up and dozed off in the relentless stop and go, the squealing and chuffing of truck brakes in this tiled h.e.l.l of refined petroleum being turned into carbon monoxide. The girl with bushy pigtails, a thumb in her mouth, leans against her brother and gives Ahmad a glazed stare, no longer courting recognition.

"Go ahead. See the b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Jack Levy is telling him, ceasing to slump, sitting up, his sickly color chased from his cheeks by excitement. "Go see see G.o.d's f.u.c.king face, for all I care. Why should I care? A woman I was crazy about has ditched me, my job is a drag, I wake up every morning at four and can't get back to sleep. My wife-Jesus, it's too sad. She sees how unhappy I am and blames herself, for having gotten so ridiculously fat, and has gone on this crash diet that might kill her. She's in agony, not eating. I want to tell her, 'Beth, forget it, nothing's going to bring us back, us when we were young.' Not that we were ever anything out of the ordinary. We had a few laughs, we used to make each other laugh and enjoyed the simple things, eating out together once a week, going to a movie when we had the energy, now and then taking a picnic up to the tables by the falls. The one child we had, his name is Mark, lives in Albuquerque and just wants to forget us, and who can blame him? G.o.d's f.u.c.king face, for all I care. Why should I care? A woman I was crazy about has ditched me, my job is a drag, I wake up every morning at four and can't get back to sleep. My wife-Jesus, it's too sad. She sees how unhappy I am and blames herself, for having gotten so ridiculously fat, and has gone on this crash diet that might kill her. She's in agony, not eating. I want to tell her, 'Beth, forget it, nothing's going to bring us back, us when we were young.' Not that we were ever anything out of the ordinary. We had a few laughs, we used to make each other laugh and enjoyed the simple things, eating out together once a week, going to a movie when we had the energy, now and then taking a picnic up to the tables by the falls. The one child we had, his name is Mark, lives in Albuquerque and just wants to forget us, and who can blame him?

We were the same with our own parents-get away from 'em, they don't get it, they're embarra.s.sing. That philosopher of yours, what was his name?"

"Sayyid Qutub. Properly, Qutb. He was a great favorite of my former teacher, Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d."

"He sounds good on America. Race, s.e.x-they spook us. Once you run out of steam, America doesn't give you much. It doesn't even let you die, what with the hospitals sucking all the money they can out of Medicare. The drug companies have turned doctors into crooks. Why should I hang around until some disease turns me into a cash cow for a bunch of crooks? Let Beth enjoy the little I can leave her; that's the way I feel. I've become a drag on the world, taking up s.p.a.ce. Go ahead, push your f.u.c.king b.u.t.ton. Like the guy on an airplane on Nine-Eleven said to somebody on the cell phone, it'll be quick." Jack reaches across his body toward the detonator and Ahmad for the second time seizes his hand in his own.

"Please, Mr. Levy," he says. "It is mine to do. The meaning changes from a victory to a defeat, if you do it."

"My G.o.d, you should be a lawyer. O.K., stop squeezing my hand. I was just kidding."

The girl in the back of the station wagon has seen the brief struggle, and her interest has woken up her brother. Their four bright black eyes stare. In the side of Ahmad's vision, Mr. Levy is rubbing his fist with the other hand. He tells Ahmad, perhaps to soften him with flattery, "You've gotten strong this summer. After our interview you gave me a handshake so limp it was insulting."

"Yes, I am no longer afraid of Tylenol."

"Tylenol?"

"Another graduate of Central High. A dull-witted bully who has taken possession of a girl I liked. And who liked me, odd as I must have seemed to her. So not only you have romantic difficulties. It is one of the pagan West's grave errors, according to Islamic theorists, to make an idol of an animal function."

"Tell me about the virgins. The seventy-two virgins who will minister to you on the otlier side."

"The Holy Qur'an does not specify that number of buriyyat. buriyyat. It says only that they are numerous, and dark-eyed, and have modest glances, and have never been touched by men or djinn." It says only that they are numerous, and dark-eyed, and have modest glances, and have never been touched by men or djinn."

"Djinn, yet! Oh, my."

"You mock, without knowing the language." Ahmad feels a hated blush steal over his face as he tells his mocker, "Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d explained the djinn and houris as symbols of G.o.d's love for us, which is everywhere and ever renewed and cannot be directly comprehended by ordinary mortals."

"O.K., if that's how you see it. I'm not arguing. You can't argue with an explosion."

"What you call an explosion is to me a pinp.r.i.c.k, a little opening that admits G.o.d's power into the world."

Though it has seemed the moment might never arrive in the balky flow of the traffic, a subtle flattening and slight upward tilt of the tunnel floor tells Ahmad that the low point has been reached, and tlie curve of the tiled wall ahead, fitfully visible through the tall procession of truck bodies, marks the weak spot where the fanatically tidy and snugly cinched square of plastic barrels should be detonated. His right hand detaches from the steering wheel and hovers over the military-drab metal box, with its little well where his thumb will fit. When he pushes it, he will join G.o.d. G.o.d will be less terribly alone. He will greet you as His son. He will greet you as His son.

"Do it," Jack Levy urges. "I'm going to just relax. Jesus, I've been tired lately."

"For you there will be no pain."

"No, but there will be for plenty of others," the older man responds, slumping way down. But he cannot stop talking. "This isn't the way I pictured it."

"Pictured what?" The echo comes on its own in Ahmad's cleansed and hollowed state.

"Dying. I always thought I'd die in bed. Maybe that's why I don't like being in it. Bed."

He wants to die, Ahmad thinks. Ahmad thinks. He taunts me to do the deed for him. He taunts me to do the deed for him. In the fifty-sixth sura, the Prophet speaks of In the fifty-sixth sura, the Prophet speaks of the moment when the soul of a dying man shall come up into his throat. the moment when the soul of a dying man shall come up into his throat. That moment is here. The journey, the That moment is here. The journey, the miraj. miraj. Buraq is ready, his s.h.i.+ning white wings rustling, unfolding. Yet in the same sura, "The Event," G.o.d asks, Buraq is ready, his s.h.i.+ning white wings rustling, unfolding. Yet in the same sura, "The Event," G.o.d asks, We created you: will you not credit us? Behold the s.e.m.e.n you discharge: did you create it, or We? We created you: will you not credit us? Behold the s.e.m.e.n you discharge: did you create it, or We? G.o.d does not want to destroy: it was He who made the world. G.o.d does not want to destroy: it was He who made the world.

The pattern of the wall tiles and of the exhaust-darkened tiles of die ceiling-countless receding repet.i.tions of squares like giant graph paper rolled into a third dimension-explodes outward in Ahmad's mind's eye in the gigantic fiat of Creation, one concentric wave after another, each pus.h.i.+ng the odier farther and fartlier out from the initial point of nothingness, G.o.d having willed the great transition from non-being to being. This was the will of the Beneficent, the Merciful, ar-Rahman ar-Rahman and and ar-Rahim, ar-Rahim, the Living, the Patient, the Generous, the Perfect, the Light, the Guide. He does not want us to desecrate His creation by willing death. He wills life. the Living, the Patient, the Generous, the Perfect, the Light, the Guide. He does not want us to desecrate His creation by willing death. He wills life.

Ahmad returns his right hand to the steering wheel. The two children in the vehicle ahead, lovingly dressed and groomed by their parents, bathed and sootlied every night, gaze toward him solemnly, having sensed the something erratic in his focus, the something unnatural in the expression of his face, mixed with the glaze of his winds.h.i.+eld. Rea.s.suringly he lifts the fingers of his right hand from the steering wheel and waves them, like the legs of a beetle on its back. Recognized at last, the children smile, and Ahmad cannot but smile back. He glances at his watch: nine-eighteen. The moment for maximum damage has slipped by; the bend in the tunnel is slowly being pulled into a widening rectangle of daylight.

"Yeah?" Levy asks, as if he has not quite heard Ahmad's response to his last remark. He sits up from his slouched position.

The black children, similarly sensing rescue, make faces through the back window of the Volvo, pulling down the corners of their eyes with their fingers and wagging their protruding tongues. Ahmad tries to smile again and repeats his friendly gesture of finger-waving but weakly; he feels spent. The tunnel's bright mouth grows to swallow him and his truck and its ghosts; together all emerge into the dull but brightening light of another Monday in Manhattan. Whatever was making the traffic in the tunnel so balky, so maddeningly sticky, has dispersed at last, dissolved on an open paved s.p.a.ce among apartment buildings of modest height and billboards and brick row houses and, several blocks distant, fragile-looking gla.s.s skysc.r.a.pers. It could be a nameless spot in northern New Jersey; only the silhouette, dead ahead, of the Empire State Building, once again the tallest building in New York City, signifies otherwise. The bronze station wagon speeds to die right, south. The children are distracted by metropolitan sights, their heads swivelling this way and that, and they do not give Ahmad a farewell wave. He feels snubbed, after die sacrifice he made for them.

Beside him Mr. Levy says "Man!" in stupid imitation of a high-school student. "I'm drenched. You had me convinced." He senses that he has not a.s.sumed the right tone and adds, softer, "Well done, my friend. Welcome to the Big Apple."

Ahmad has slowed and tben stopped, not quite in the middle of the great wide s.p.a.ce. Cars and trucks pus.h.i.+ng into freedom behind tbe halted white truck swerve and blast their horns; side windows slide down and insulting gestures spit out. Ahmad spots the accelerating midnight-blue Mercedes and smiles to think diat for all its angry attempts to pa.s.s it had been still behind him, with its presumptuous and unwordiy investment thief of a driver.

Jack Levy realizes that he is in charge now. "So," he says. "The question becomes, What do we do now? Let's get this truck back to Jersey. They'll be happy to see it. And happy to see you, I regret to say. But you committed no crime, I'll be the first to point out, except drive a load of hazmat out of state on a Cla.s.s C CDL. They'll probably lift your license, but tbat's O.K. Delivering furniture wasn't your future anyway."

Ahmad eases the truck forward, less in die way of traffic, waiting for an instruction. "Straight ahead, and left when you can," he is told. "I don't want to go back into any tunnel witJi you and this thing, thanks. We'll take the George Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge. Could we put the safety catch back on, do you think?"

Ahmad reaches down, fearful now of disturbing the carefully rigged mechanism. The little yellow lever says snap; snap; the ponderous payload remains quiet. Mr. Levy in his relief at still being alive keeps talking. "Turn left at tbe light up there, that should be Tentii Avenue, I think. I'm trying to remember if the West Side Highway takes trucks. We may have to get on Riverside Drive, or just work up to Broadway and stay on it all the way up to the bridge." the ponderous payload remains quiet. Mr. Levy in his relief at still being alive keeps talking. "Turn left at tbe light up there, that should be Tentii Avenue, I think. I'm trying to remember if the West Side Highway takes trucks. We may have to get on Riverside Drive, or just work up to Broadway and stay on it all the way up to the bridge."

Ahmad lets himself be guided, taking the left turn. The path is straight. "You're driving like a pro," Mr. Levy tells him. "Feel O.K.?" Ahmad nods. "I know you're in shock. Me, too. But there's really no place to park this crate. Once you get to the bridge we're almost home. It turns into 80. We'll go right to police headquarters, behind City Hall. We won't let die b.a.s.t.a.r.ds intimidate us. Your turning this truck back in one piece makes them look good, and if they have half a brain they know it. It could have been a disaster. Anybody tries to bully you, remind them you were set up by a CIA operative, in a sting operation of very dubious legality. You're a victim, Ahmad-a fall guy. I can't imagine the Department of Homeland Security wants the details out in the media, or hashed over in some courtroom."

Mr. Levy is silent for a block or two, waiting for Ahmad to say sometbing, tben says, "I know this may sound premature, but I wasn't kidding about you making a good lawyer. You're cool under pressure. You talk well. In tbe years to come, Arab-Americans are going to need plenty of lawyers. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. I guess we're on Eighth Avenue, I thought I had us on Tenth. Keep going-this'll take us onto Broadway at Columbus Circle. I rbink they still call it that, though the poor wop isn't p.c. any more. The Port Authority Bus Terminal on your left-I'm sure you've been tbere once or I guess we're on Eighth Avenue, I thought I had us on Tenth. Keep going-this'll take us onto Broadway at Columbus Circle. I rbink they still call it that, though the poor wop isn't p.c. any more. The Port Authority Bus Terminal on your left-I'm sure you've been tbere once or twice. Then we're going to cross Forty-second Street. I remember when it was real raunchy, but the Disney Corporation has cleaned it up, I guess."

Ahmad wants to focus, amid the yellow taxis and the traffic lights and the pedestrians cl.u.s.tered at every corner, on this novel world around him, but Mr. Levy keeps having thoughts. He says, "It'll be interesting to me to find out if that d.a.m.n stuff was really connected, or if our side had managed a double cross and it wasn't. That was my hole card, but I was just as happy not to have it played. Thank G.o.d you chickened out." This sounds cra.s.s in his own ears. "Or relented, let's say. Saw the light."

All around them, up Eighth Avenue to Broadway, the great city crawls with people, some smartly dressed, many of them shabby, a few beautiful but most not, all reduced by the towering structures around them to the size of insects, but scuttling, hurrying, intent in the milky morning sun upon some plan or scheme or hope they are hugging to themselves, tlieir reason for living another day, each one of them impaled live upon the pin of consciousness, fixed upon self-advancement and self-preservation. That, and only that. These devils, These devils, Ahmad thinks, Ahmad thinks, have taken away my G.o.d. have taken away my G.o.d.

A Note About the Author

John Updike was born in 1932, in s.h.i.+llington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, The New Yorker, and since 1957 has lived in Ma.s.sachusetts. He is the father of four children and the author of fifty-odd previous books, including collections of short stories, poems, and criticism. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal. and since 1957 has lived in Ma.s.sachusetts. He is the father of four children and the author of fifty-odd previous books, including collections of short stories, poems, and criticism. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal.

A Note on the Type

The text of this book was set in a digitized version of Janson, a typeface long thought to have been made by the Dutchman Anton Janson, who was a practicing typefounder in Leipzig from 1668 to 1687. However, it has been conclusively demonstrated that these types are actually the work of Nicholas Kis (1650-1702), a Hungarian, who most probably learned his trade from the master Dutch typefounder Dirk Voskens. The type is an excellent example of the influential and st.u.r.dy Dutch types that prevailed in England up to the time William Caslon developed his own incomparable designs from them.

Composed by Creative Graphics, Allentown, Pennsylvania Printed and bound by R. R. Donnelley & Sons, Harrisonburg, Virginia