An Acceptable Vengeance

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PART 1

"In three words

I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life.

It goes on."

Robert Frost

1.

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Saturday, October 14, 2000

The last image Marian had of Rob that day captured him as he opened the refrigerator, pulled out the quart of orange juice and emptied it, his throat moving with each swallow. Don’t drink out of the carton, she’d said. Get a glass.

He’d paused, moved the carton from his mouth, and laughed. She remembered that laugh, a warm joyous sound that careened around the kitchen. His dark hair had been brushed, but still managed to look disheveled and mussed. No doubt when the girls saw that renegade curl separate and ease down his forehead, they described him as ‘way cool,’ or ‘hot’ or whatever young women said now about a sexy and desirable man. Her son, the man.

He’d tossed the empty carton into the trash, then picked her up, all arms and aftershave, and whirled her around. He did that a lot now that he was a head taller than she was with weight room muscles. Give it a rest, Mom, he’d said, kissed her on her cheek, started for the door, then turned. I won’t be here for dinner tonight. I’ve got a date. Tell Dad I’m in the truck.

And then he was gone.

With Bill, she remembered sounds.

From the small radio mounted beneath her cabinet, someone sang, "I can see clearly now, the rain is gone." Over the music, she heard Bill on the phone in the dining room, his professor’s voice shaping words as if they had substance. He must have been talking to that young female student who persisted in calling him at home. The song from the radio finished just as she heard him replace the phone into its cradle and cross to the kitchen door.

That twit, he’d said as he came into the kitchen, tall, and lean, a poet’s face under dark hair laced with gray. Could you take my blue jacket to the cleaners?

He caught her by her shoulders and pulled her to him for a quick kiss that scarcely brushed her cheek, let alone her lips. We should be back around 5:00 unless the game goes into overtime. And then he, too, was gone, the door clattering closed behind him and the house echoing emptiness. Moments later she heard his crew cab pickup back out of the drive.

Her memory of the remainder of that day blipped brief scenes like tableaus caught in a jerky strobe light. Bill’s colleague from the university, Dr. Hani, waiting in the parking lot of the library. His musky cologne that almost gagged her as he climbed into her Ford Taurus. She was taking him to see the old farmhouse northeast of Edmond that her co-workers at Holdermann Realty were sure would never sell.

But Dr. Hani had clapped his small manicured hands together and said, Very usable. He’d pulled a camera from his jacket pocket and shot the barn, the large metal building with the overhead doors, and the storm shelter humped like a poorly buried culvert. After he’d filmed the house inside and out from several vantage points, she returned him to the University and drove home.

The remainder of the images from that day blurred into denial.

They’re probably funding raising, she decided when she saw the Highway Patrol car parked in front of her house. A shudder of uneasiness crawled up her back though. Bill and Rob would have taken I-35 to Stillwater.

You must have the wrong house, she told them when the two troopers helped her from her car and onto her porch. The William Bradleys live here. She stressed ‘William’ as if they had confused William with a Peter or a Samuel.

When they eased her into the foyer and past the reclaimed church pew that caught coats and clutter, she whispered, You’ve made a terrible mistake, but her voice shook.

Then they seated her on the heavy couch that faced the fieldstone fireplace and started with the words that made no sense. Marian licked dry lips, and stared at golden dust motes in the shaft of sunlight.

Over the next twenty-four hours, news vans sprouted in her yard and on her street like toadstools.

Oklahoma City, Sunday, October 15, 2000

As his apartment door clicked shut behind him, Lyle Harrison, Director of Security at Alpha Leonus University of Science & Technology, shed his jacket, and laid his holstered gun on the narrow table by the door. His blue uniform still carried the smell of burned flesh, and the sharp pungency of the morgue. He hadn’t shaved or eaten yet today and the blond stubble on his square chin itched.

Bill Bradley and Rob Bradley were both gone in a fireball of scorched metal and charred flesh. No doubt about that. He’d just seen their bodies and what was left of Bill’s pickup. But the knowledge, the realization of this slammed into him repeatedly, surprising him all over again. Hell, he and Bill had a standing lunch every Monday. What was he supposed to do now?

He paused in the middle of his living room, a square sturdy man with thinning blonde hair, and forced himself to focus. He had to keep moving. He would grieve later.

Yesterday’s tragedy on the Stillwater road couldn’t match the Murrah bombing in shock value, but it came close. Thank God the perp had targeted two people instead of igniting himself at the game. The body count could have been in the hundreds. Lyle still couldn’t get his mind around the likelihood that Mohamed Arazi, a student at ALU, a skinny young man with spiked hair and large eyes, had planned and carried out what had every appearance of a suicide bombing. That sounded too much like Iraq or one of those other countries. Hell, around here, folks used guns as the murder weapon of choice.

But Bill and Rob . . . gone? Bill, his friend for more years than he wanted to think about. And Rob, the son he’d have chosen had he had that choice.

He replayed his stop by the Bradley home. The Martins, George and Evelyn, were there, hovering over a broken Marian. She’d looked up at him, said something about him being there, thank you, maybe, but he’d had the feeling that she hadn’t registered who was kneeling in front of her. He’d wanted to touch her, hold her, tell her his heart was aching as much as hers was. But those blank eyes had stopped him.

Given his years in the military and as a policeman, he’d thought he was tougher than this, but his throat was tight. He blinked to clear his eyes. This wasn’t business as usual, these were his friends. Hell, they were his family.

Lyle unbuttoned his shirt as he moved unsteadily toward the bedroom like a prize fighter on rubber legs. If those two could be snuffed out like that, then nobody was safe. He rubbed his face. Somehow, he had to pull himself together. In less than an hour he had to brief his men and coordinate with the Ok. City PD. And with Andy if the FBI got involved.

An annoying sound repeated from the end table by the sofa. He finally identified the repetitive ping as the answer machine reporting a waiting message.

Goddamned media vultures. Not even twenty four hours had passed . . .

He looked at his watch. If he ignored the phone, he had just enough time for a shower.

The pinging continued.

But maybe this wasn’t someone asking for an interview. Maybe it was somebody who had something constructive to tell him about yesterday. About whatever the hell had happened on the Stillwater road. He lifted the receiver.

President Wilson from ALU, his boss, jumped right in. No greeting. No discussion. Just a sharp voice that barely hid his shock and pain. I need to discuss our upcoming press conference with you, ASAP.

So much for the shower.

Lyle quickly changed his shirt, splashed water over his tired face, buckled on his gun. At the door, he paused, picked up the small silver frame from the narrow table and looked at Marian Bradley’s laughing face. She was younger in the photo, about the age when he’d first seen her at that basketball game, trying to get the car keys away from her inebriated son. He’d driven Rob to the Bradley home that night, and helped her get him down into his basement apartment. Bill was off somewhere at some meeting.

Lyle gently replaced the frame, again rubbed his hands over his rough unshaven face. Time enough later to examine how this changed his relationship with Marian.

Squaring his shoulders and drawing in a deep breath, he stepped into the hallway and locked the door behind him.

In a 1920s brick bungalow in the Crown Heights district of Oklahoma City, Dr. Hani, his eyes angry, his mouth tight, opened the front door for the imam Barak. He didn’t grab his arm, but he’d have liked to do exactly that. He planted his hand in the middle of the religious leader’s back and shoved him down the hallway toward his home office. Dr. Hani’s wife Leila smiled and greeted the imam from the kitchen, but when she saw her husband’s face, she herded her two children upstairs into their bedrooms. Hani sharply closed the door to his office and turned on a small radio to blur their conversation.

What was Mohamed thinking? Dr. Hani’s voice was quiet but furious.

The imam bowed his head. He gloried in the idea of martyrdom. If his conflict with the professor hadn’t haappened, there would have been something else.

Didn’t he understand the scrutiny this act would generate?

He told me the professor’s insult to the Koran could not go unanswered.

Did you know what he planned?

The imam didn’t answer, he just looked at his hands clasped tightly in his lap.

Now Dr. Hani’s voice was cold and hard. You fool. Do you have any concept of the damage you’ve done?

2.

Oklahoma City, Sunday, October 15, 2000

Marian emerged from the sedative induced haze to a sense of something terribly wrong.

She squinted at the light coming in her bedroom window. Noon? Early afternoon? How long had she slept? She never slept in the middle of the day.

Turning over to look at her clock, she saw the broken dresser mirror, the shards of shattered porcelain.

What on earth? She flung the afghan to one side and sat up, only to lie back down again as the room spun around her and her stomach rebelled.

Was she sick then? Would Bill come in with tea and comforting words?

The wrongness returned. Bill and Rob?

Her hands remembered the small pottery bowl on the dresser, its surface cool and rough. Bill always put his change in it. The small bowl, change and all, had sailed through the air as fury had swept through her. Fury about what?

Her mind replayed the dresser mirror shattering again in slow motion with the pennies and nickels and dimes showering and clattering like hail. The porcelain shepherdess Rob had given her had been next. Oh, god, why had she thrown that?

She had to move. This . . .thing inside her stabbed and hurt. She couldn’t let it out though. She knew that. She sat up again, and by moving slowly, was able to get her feet over the side of the bed.

Now the image of the two troopers flashed into her mind. She’d come home from showing Dr. Hani that horrible old farmhouse northeast of town. The two men in uniforms were waiting when she came.

And Evelyn and George arrived just minutes later.

Those men had said something about Bill and Rob but that was impossible.

Not only impossible but totally unacceptable.

Those poor twisted and blackened figures at the morgue weren’t her husband and son. Bill’s suitcase from his conference was still there by the closet where he’d left it last night.

No, not last night. Friday night.

Marian noted the bandaid in the bend of her left elbow, remembered the concerned face of somebody bending over her. George’s golfing buddy? Dr. somebody. Had he given her a shot?

Now from far away, she heard the television. A great sense of relief swept over her. Of course, Bill was downstairs watching television. He’d let her nap and he was down there . . .

Evelyn said something then, her firm voice rolling up the stairs. George and Evelyn here while she was napping?

Car engines and voices surfaced now, coming from outside. She cautiously stood, eased to the window and looked down on chaos. Men with cameras on their shoulders, technicians with cables, young women in baseball caps with clip boards and young men with skimpy beards, torn levis and walkie talkies tramped across her lawn. Two vans almost blocked her street.

The uneasiness, the sense of wrongness returned, a grinding sense of loss.

If she could just see the place where the troopers said it happened, she’d be able to show them they’d made a terrible mistake.

She washed her face, put on a clean blouse, found her purse and car keys and breathed in a first deep breath. The two Highway Patrol troopers had come to the wrong house. That was all.

Marian floated, gently cradled by remnants of the drug, down the stairs George got up from Bill’s chair in the living room where he was watching a ballgame. Evelyn stopped in the doorway, balancing two cups of coffee.

Marian, George said. Want some coffee?

Marian looked from George, big teddy bear George, to Evelyn. They were both looking at her with such . . . sorrow.

I’ll be back this evening, she announced, moving toward the door.

Marian, you don’t want to go out there, Evelyn said when she saw Marian’s car keys. Those reporters . . .

George stepped forward also. Marian, let me get Lyle if you want to go somewhere. Or Evelyn and I’ll take you.

But Marian was already out the door, down the narrow walk, and scrambling into her car, parked still at a crazy angle from when she saw the patrolmen on her porch an eternity ago.

The news media leaped into action. Marian had barely locked her doors when sharp rapping on her passenger side window jerked her around. A young man had a microphone and was pointing to it. Beside him a TV cameraman aimed his camera at her.

George charged from the porch, waving his arms. Get away from her. Leave her alone. Evelyn came out and locked the front door.

A snapping sound like beads clacking together turned Marian toward the driver’s side window. A woman with a blue biker style bandana snapped her Nikon at least eight more times when Marian’s face was turned toward her.

Marian ground the motor to life, ignoring the tapping and gesturing, shoved the car into gear and gunned out of the driveway. She felt a thump even as she saw two reporters leap clear. The TV cameraman bounced onto the driveway as her car caught his hip. From the corner of her eye she saw his camera fly into the air, then plummet to the concrete, shattering. He staggered up, caught his balance, and shouted, Goddamn it, lady.

Marian yanked her car around, squealed down the street scattering people and clipping the mirror on one of the news vans. She headed toward I-35, a lemming on its way to the sea, her speedometer reaching sixty even before she left the residential area.

Blue sky arched over her car. White clouds ran before the wind as she pulled onto the Interstate. She felt a wonderful peace, almost euphoric and rolled down her windows to let the wind rush into the car. At seventy five, she darted around the car in front of her, tailgated another until it pulled over and let her pass. She kicked the speed to eighty, then eighty-five. The highway belonged to her.

October in the heartland was a beautiful, golden time. A storm was due in on Tuesday night or Wednesday. But today was crisp and beautiful, too benign for her grim errand. She was sure though when she saw where the explosion happened, she could straighten out this mix-up, show that someone else had died, not her family.

Thirty seven minutes later, Marian slowed from her breakneck speed and turned off I-35 onto State Highway 51, a four lane with a grassy median. Her muscles tightened and tension shortened her breath. The cushioning effect of the tranquilizer was fading.

The trooper had said about two miles east of I-35 in the westbound lane of the Stillwater highway. Marian set her odometer and drove the distance carefully, watching on both sides of the road for pieces of metal, broken glass, any sign of the tragedy. As the odometer registered the distance, she began to see the scattered debris.

She drove to the next pull across, parked on the shoulder of the highway. Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be here. Scarcely able to breathe, she cautiously opened the car door. With cicadas and grasshoppers rustling in the fading grass, and intense silence around her, she began to walk.

A white side mirror lay in the gravel by the asphalt, the metal twisted, scorched, but the glass still intact. Shards of windshield glass, nuts, screws, bolts, pieces of metal were scattered over the area like macabre confetti.

They had told her the time of the accident was around 3:00, 3:30 on Saturday. Bill and Rob had apparently left the game early, perhaps to avoid traffic. A 9-1-1 caller reported a pickup on fire by the side of the road.

Marian knelt, stared at the scorched crater beside the highway, at the bits of metal and glass. This looked like those CNN images from the Middle East.

Waiting for some knowledge, some understanding to replace the numbness that still encased and buffered her, she looked cautiously around the area.

They’d told her the accident was caused by an explosion, source unknown. Three bodies were found in the pickup, two in the front seat, one in the backseat of the extended cab.

That alone was proof that the dead men weren’t Bill and Rob. Only the two of them went to the Stillwater ballgame. Trooper Perkins said there were three bodies.

She stood, brushed dirt from her knees, unaware that Evelyn and George had parked behind her car, followed by two news vans. Wind whipped tears into her eyes. She looked at the shattered bits of glass and twisted metal strewn on both sides of the road, at the blackened hole on the shoulder of the road.

A few yards off the road, something glittered in the grass. She started down the sloping side of the bar ditch toward it, then stopped.

She didn’t really need to see that. That was just a . . .

The shape reminded her of a . . .

Her breath came now in small panting gasps and she saw that the reflection came from a stainless steel coffee mug.

Like Bill’s . . .

She stared at the object in the grass, unable to move. His cup had the university’s logo etched onto its side. She stepped closer, moved through air that had become thick as water, and looked at the ruined metal, the university’s logo scarcely visible beneath the smoke and grime. The black plastic lid was gone, the handle melted and twisted, the cup itself blackened and distorted.

She couldn’t stop herself. She reached down and picked up the metal cup, rubbed the side until the ALU starburst emerged.

With hands trembling she slowly turned the cup so the other side was visible.

Inside the same decorative design were the words, Bill Bradley.

Bill’s cup.

A gift from her this past Christmas, wrapped in sparkling silver paper to match the bright shining silver of the cup.

The dam inside her burst then, sending her to her knees in the sharp gravel and asphalt, then into a fetal curl on the sun-warmed ground, the ruined cup cradled against her.

The sun was a fiery disk on the horizon, and dusk blanketed the area before Lyle Harrison parked his pickup behind the Martin’s car. President Wilson had been a basket case, seeing terrorists behind every building. After he’d calmed the president, he’d met with his officers, briefing them on what was known about the explosion that had killed Professor Bradley, his son and the student from the university. Then, after George’s call, he’d had to sprint across campus to the gymnasium parking lot to get to his car. He’d left campus as soon as he could, but he was still twenty minutes behind the Martins and the news vehicles.

She’s been there like that for a while now, George said. He helped Evelyn up from where she’d sat cradling Marian in her arms, and replaced the blanket around the prone figure.

Lyle nodded. Looked around the devastated area, went to the two news crews.

Give her a break, guys, and lose this footage. She’s not going anywhere. The university will have a press conference maybe even this evening. He handed each driver a business card. Or you can talk with me. But leave her alone for now.

As the two SUVs drove away, Lyle gently folded the blanket around Marian and carried her to his pickup. Evelyn checked and found Marian’s keys in her car’s ignition, got in, and adjusted the seat. George followed the other two cars back to the city.

3.

London, England, Sunday, October 15, 2000

From the Peppery Lemon Pub off Piccadilly Circus, Rashid bin Hashim al-Riyadh had a clear sightline to the bus stop for the red double decker that all the tourists loved to ride. He’d circled the block four times before the proper parking opened where the green Audi had to be for things to work. That was the only problem they’d found with the cell phone trigger. It’s receiver had to be placed just so. He’d have to refine that, increase the range.

Rashid lit another cigarette, his third since they’d come in twenty minutes ago. His hand that held his lighter trembled. He had to brace himself to hit the tip of the cigarette with the flame.

His brother Dhakir sat across from him, watching him clench and unclench his hands. They both knew he was getting worse. Rashid rubbed the gap on his left hand where his ring finger should be, then picked up his small cup, carefully brought it to his mouth and tried to swallow the sweet tea.

Yemen was a good clean strike, Dhakir said. We should be proud.

Rashid looked down so Dhakir couldn’t see the despair and sorrow in his eyes. He placed the cigarette in the ashtray, not trusting himself to get the thing to his mouth.

Proud?

In Aden Harbor last week, the great plume of smoke had twisted and foamed into the clear sky. His two friends who delivered the explosives to that American ship were dead. He had watched them ride their small boat across the sun dazzled water, darting like a dragonfly amongst the other boats. He’d watched the perfect arc of metal and smoke and noise that was their death.

Two lives for a hole in the side of a ship.

The crippled ship had listed sharply to one side, too damaged to move. Emil and Hassan were dead, but it was a good clean strike. And today he and Dhakir were supposed to deliver another good clean strike. They should be wearing the bombs instead of hiding in here and hoping the detonator worked.

He picked up the cigarette and tapped the lengthy ash into the ashtray then sucked smoke deep into his lungs. After a moment, the tension inside him eased a bit. Outside, traffic continued, but no red tourist bus came around the corner.

They’d left Aden almost immediately after the explosion to avoid the American investigators and the airport lock-down. When they finished here, they’d vanish again, ghosts on their way to the USA. Maybe they would finish that business in time to celebrate Ramadan at home with their other brother in Ha’il City. Inshallah.

He hoped Allah would will it so. He wanted, no, he needed to be home in his brother’s garden north of Riyadh with bird song around him and the scent of jasmine and roses in the air. After the American business was over, maybe Allah would will him a good night’s sleep without the faces of the dead floating in the dark above him.

Around him the noise level in the pub increased and then decreased like a wave approaching and receding. The precise sound of England’s language scraped his ears. He wondered if anyone’s ears had ever shut down, just closed up and turned off sound when things became too much. He imagined total silence. A white, totally silent room. No objects, no color, no sound.

Dhakir, rounded and soft like a large pillow, studied the menu. What would Dhakir do if he threw the cell phone on the table and left this place?

Dhakir’s head jerked up as if Rashid’s intense scrutiny like a physical touch had reached him. Then, with a good natured grin, he peered again at the sticky menu. His soft brown eyes traced the listings of fish and chips and meat pies and the various ales and other brews, as if the choices he made in the next few minutes would affect the rest of his life.

Rashid smiled sourly. If Dhakir ordered food from this place, they might.

A tall and slender blonde woman, her pale hair brushing her shoulders, walked by the green Audi and paused at the bus stop. She wore a suede jacket and a tan scarf wrapped twice around her throat. She had to be American. Or Swedish. He didn’t make much distinction between the two nationalities. They were both tall. Taller than the Mediterranean stock that was his heritage.

If there were one thing that Rashid resented about the Americans, it was their universal appearance of health, of being well fed. Some were too well fed. But they were all tall. So tall. Even their short men were taller than he was. Good food as a child? Allah could not be so cruel as to favor the infidels over the believers.

He smoked rapidly, nervously, thinking about races and nationalities and children without enough to eat.

In his pocket the small cell phone with its programmed speed dial awaited its test. Before he and Dhakir caught their flight to America, he needed to be sure his idea worked.

As the woman moved across his field of vision, Rashid fingered the small device in his pocket. One movement of his finger could change her life forever. Or end it. At times the idea of his power over life and death thrilled him. Other times it humbled him. Today he looked at the grace and beauty of the woman and felt ashamed.

She paced