From the Indie Side (39 page)

“You have to give yourself up,” she pleaded,
taking pains not to raise her voice too loud.

“I can’t,” he replied coldly. “Not while
there’s another bomb out there.”

Her face seemed to drain of blood. The pupils
in her eyes dilated with terror. Her cheeks, normally so rosy,
looked gaunt and pale.

“There’s one more bomb to stop,” he
added.

“But you can’t stop it,” Deb protested. “You
said so yourself, nothing changes!”

“But I have to try.”

“Why?” she asked. “You know no one’s going to
listen to you. If you’ve seen the bomb go off, you know it’s going
to detonate anyway, so what’s the point?”

“I can’t stand by knowing innocent people
will die,” he said, trying to hide his trembling hands. He wanted
to pull them beneath the table, but that would have been too
obvious. Deb was playing with his hands, subconsciously grabbing at
his fingers while emphasizing her rationale.

“I have to try,” he said. “And this time,
it’s different. This time, I don’t remember the bomb going
off.”

“Where is it?” she asked, releasing his
fingers and sitting back a little in the booth.

“Midtown Police Station, just off 66th.”

Deb raised her hand to her mouth, gasping as
she cried, “Rachel! My sister Rachel works there. She’s a detective
with the narcotics squad.”

Kareem was silent. He could see the
realization in her eyes; she was replaying something he had said,
grasping at the subtle meaning in his words.

“You don’t remember, do you? This time, you
don’t remember what happens!”

Kareem pursed his lips and shook his head
slowly.

“You die!” she cried, forgetting to keep her
voice down. From around the diner, customers and waiters looked
over at them, hearing the rising swell of voices from their corner
booth. “You die, don’t you? That’s why you don’t remember the bomb
exploding.”

Kareem felt his downturned lips trembling,
quivering as he nodded. He couldn’t make eye contact. His eyes cast
down at his empty plate with a smear of chocolate icing on one
side. Crumbs rested on the porcelain. They seemed so normal, so
innocuous. They were the remnants of the last bite of food he’d
ever taste, and he knew it.

“Why you? Why do you have to try? If you’ve
seen or remembered or whatever, why do you have to be the one to
risk your life? Why can’t you just tell the police what you know? I
could tell Rachel. She’d believe me!”

“She’d think you were crazy,” he muttered
under his breath, glancing sideways to see if anyone was watching
them. No one was; they’d all returned to their own sideshow dramas,
he figured.

“But why you?” she pleaded.

Kareem held her hand, squeezing her fingers
gently, running his fingers over her soft white hand as he replied,
“Because there’s no one else. Because tens of thousands of people
will die.”

“I... I don’t understand,” she said.

“All this,” he replied, gesturing around him.
“Battery Park, the museum. This isn’t the attack they’ve been
planning. The real attack is still to come. Everything we’ve seen
so far, all that is just a diversion, a distraction, something to
get the police chasing their tail while the real attack comes as a
knockout blow.

“The real attack is in the form of a dirty
bomb, something that will shower New York with radioactive
debris.”

“So tell the police,” she replied, looking
deep into his eyes. “Tell them about the bombers!”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I’ve only ever seen one of the bombers,” he
replied. “And he’s a police officer!”

Kareem sat on a park bench across from the
police station. Birds flittered in the trees. A cool breeze stirred
the autumn leaves, blowing them across the ground. Fiery red and
yellow leaves piled up against the various low-lying fences lining
the walkways, blown up by the prevailing wind.

A squirrel darted across the grass and up the
side of an old oak tree. A young girl played on a swing in the
playground. Her mother sat to one side, looking at something on her
smartphone.

Kareem watched as people came and went from
the police station, climbing the concrete steps. A couple of police
officers leaned on a patrol car, sipping coffee to ward off the
cold. He wondered what they were talking about. Even from where he
was, he could catch their laughter floating on the breeze.

Kareem couldn’t remember. As much as he
tried, he couldn’t remember how he got into the police station; he
only knew he did. Whether it was lost keys, a wallet, his phone, or
a pair of scissors, he’d never been able to remember where he left
things, and trying only made it worse. The police station was the
same. No amount of stress or strain was recalling that fragile
memory to his mind. Time was running out. Maybe Deb was right.
Maybe he was trying too hard, demanding too much. Maybe he had to
stop trying to do this alone and just approach the police. Give
himself up.

“Do you think he’s hungry?” a soft voice
asked.

Kareem hadn’t even noticed the young girl
standing in front of him with her fluffy red jacket. She’d wandered
over from the swings. It took him a second to realize who she was
talking about.

“The squirrel?” he asked, pointing at the
tiny creature halfway up the trunk of the tree. Its tail shook and
puffed with each skittery motion, as though the bushy fur had a
mind of its own, being dragged along by the squirrel as it clawed
at the bark.

She was holding a squashed sandwich.

“Do you think he’ll take it out of my
hand?”

Kareem smiled.

“There’s only one way to find out,” he said.
“You have to try.”

“Denise!” the woman cried, getting up from
her park bench and rushing over to her daughter. The young girl
looked back at her mother, surprised by her muted sense of panic.
“You know you’re not supposed to speak to strangers.”

“But he’s a nice man,” Denise replied as her
mother grabbed her briskly by the arm. The mother faked a smile for
Kareem, raising her eyebrows as if to convey something like “You
understand.” Kareem raised one hand, trying to smile back and
appear friendly. The truth was, he’d caught his reflection in
various shop windows while walking down to the police station. He
was a mess. His hair was tousled. One side had been shaved close to
the scalp. Patches of dirt stained his face. He must have looked
like a bum to her with his ripped jacket and filthy jeans.

Kareem couldn’t blame her for wanting to
protect her daughter. He wanted to yell out something after her, to
tell her to get as far away from here as she could, but the idea of
instilling fear in someone felt wrong. How far was far enough? She
wouldn’t believe him. She’d think he was crazy, and she was leaving
anyway, so he let her leave in peace. Young Denise looked back.
Kareem waved and smiled.

He watched as Denise and her mother
disappeared through the trees, following a concrete path to the far
side of the park.

“Go,” he said quietly, wishing they would get
as far away from here as they could.

Memories drifted by like clouds in the sky.
The more he tried, the less he remembered. But Denise had been a
distraction, allowing his mind to process those thoughts and
memories of events that hadn’t transpired yet. In the quiet,
glimpses of the next few minutes swelled within his mind. Kareem
had a growing awareness of what was about to happen.

A police officer walked past, glancing at
him, and Kareem expected the worst, but the officer walked on,
cutting through the park to get to the police station. He stopped
and chatted with the two officers leaning against their patrol
car.

Kareem got up and walked out of the park.
Without looking for traffic, he jogged across the road and up the
steps, determined not to delay any longer. If he didn’t act now, he
knew he never would. Time was running out.

The inside of the police station was sparse.
Worn linoleum lined the floor, curling half a foot up the walls
like it would in a hospital. Posters adorned the walls. Wanted by
the FBI, wanted by the police, or missing and wanted by
families.

The foyer ended with a counter, protected by
bulletproof glass roughly an inch and a half thick. To one side, a
door made from a quarter-inch steel plate barred access to the rest
of the station, with a coded keypad for a lock.

There was no one at reception.

Kareem looked around before pushing the call
button, trying to see if there was someone off to one side in the
adjacent office behind the bulletproof glass, but he was alone in
the reception area.

It took the best part of a minute before a
police officer walked casually into the tiny office on the other
side of the bulletproof glass.

“Can I help you?” the young woman said. Her
uniform was smart, crisp and neatly ironed. Her blond hair had been
pulled back into a bun, without a single strand out of place. The
thick black belt on her hips looked absurdly large on her small
frame. A gun rested on one side, a Taser on the other. She looked
at him with disdain. Given her appearance, and the stark contrast
to his own scruffy clothing, he could understand why.

“Kareem Hadee Rafid,” he said.

Kareem hadn’t thought about how he should
surrender or what he should say. He’d never done anything like this
before and wasn’t sure what was appropriate. Should he say, I
surrender? He certainly didn’t want to suggest he was one of the
bombers, as he wasn’t. Could the act of giving himself up be
misconstrued as guilt?

“Do you have information relating to the
whereabouts of Kareem Hadee Rafid?” the officer asked, pulling out
a pad and pen. Her eyes glanced down at the pad as she filled in
the date and time.

“I am Kareem Hadee Rafid,” Kareem replied
softly, smiling weakly.

She jumped. Her neck snapped back and her
eyes opened wide. With one hand, the officer pushed a button hidden
just out of sight beneath the bench. In a swift motion, she drew
her gun, pointing it at him. That she was on the other side of a
sheet of bulletproof glass apparently hadn’t registered in her
thinking.

Kareem raised his hands, saying, “I’m here to
surrender.”

The officer stepped back away from the
counter, keeping her gun trained on him. She spoke into a
microphone slung over her shoulder.

There were cameras in both corners of the
foyer, their lenses obscured by black, glassy domes.

Kareem stepped back, keeping his hands
raised, looking up at one of the cameras, knowing he was being
watched. He could hear boots pounding down a hallway somewhere
beyond the steel door and the bulletproof glass.

A male police officer ran into the room with
the woman. The heavy metal door was flung open, slamming into the
wall. Three police officers burst through into the foyer with their
guns drawn, shouting at him.

Kareem was already on his knees, trying to
make himself look as small and unthreatening as possible. He locked
his fingers together behind his head.

“Get down on the ground!” one of the officers
cried.

“Show me your hands,” another yelled.

“What’s under your coat?” the third
cried.

Kareem wasn’t sure whom he should respond to
so he remained still, not daring to breathe.

One of the officers darted around behind him
and out of his peripheral vision, but Kareem knew he was still
there, probably with a gun trained on the back of his head.

“Search him,” the officer in the doorway
cried.

The third officer stepped in front of Kareem.
With his gun pointed square at Kareem’s chest, he stabbed at
Kareem’s jacket with his free hand, tentatively patting him
down.

If he had thought about it, Kareem would have
made sure to have his jacket undone, or better yet, have taken it
off before entering the station, but it was too late now. Satisfied
there was nothing bulky beneath the jacket, the officer pulled
roughly at the zipper, yanking it down and exposing Kareem’s
T-shirt beneath. Again, the officer frisked with one hand. The gun
in his other hand was perilously close to Kareem. The slightest
twitch and it would go off, Kareem was sure of it. The officer
slapped around beneath Kareem’s coat, up under his armpits and down
his side, checking his hips and the insides of his thighs.

“Clear,” he called. “No bomb. No gun. No
knife.”

“On the ground,” came the cry from behind
him.

Before Kareem could respond, a boot struck
him in the center of his back, knocking him forward onto his face.
He broke his fall with his hands only to have one of his arms
jerked violently behind him and up into the small of his back. A
handcuff closed around his wrist, the cold steel pressed hard
against his skin. Seconds later, his other hand was wrenched back
and into the handcuffs.

“Kareem Hadee Rafid,” the voice behind him
cried, speaking rapidly, reciting his Miranda rights by rote. “You
are under arrest for the terrorist incident at Battery Park and the
bombing of the Museum of Natural History. You have the right to
remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in
a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before
speaking to police, and to have an attorney present during
questioning, both now and in the future. If you cannot afford an
attorney, one will be appointed to you by the court. If you decide
to answer any questions now, without an attorney present, you will
still have the right to stop answering at any time until you have
consulted with an attorney. Do you understand what I have told
you?”

“Yes.”

“Knowing and understanding these rights, as I
have explained them to you, are you willing to answer my questions
without an attorney present?”

“Yes.”