ROAD TRIP

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2004

After morning prayers, Hassan sent Pervez to pick up the car that would deliver them to Paradise. They’d found it two weeks earlier in the classified section of the PennySaver News—a rather morbid listing of cars, homes, jewelry, apparel, and other earthly possessions of those who permanently departed South Florida’s retirement communities. Dead people were one of the fastest-growing demographics in Boca and its environs. The PennySaver was a combination obituary page and Craigslist.

Hassan paid cash for a late-model Cadillac, sold by one Sylvia Goldstein, whose husband, Jules, had just passed away. It was perfect: a deep trunk for the explosives, a GPS that advised misdirected terrorists to turn around “at the next legal U-turn,” a Bose sound system to play Rona’s relaxation CDs, and a still-active subscription to OnStar (“Hello, OnStar? I locked my keys in my car and have to blow myself up. Can you unlock it for me? Thanks!”). It also had room for a tattered copy of the Qur’an, which Hassan had tucked into the glove compartment.

They assembled around Jules’s black Caddy in the employee parking lot of the Paradise Hotel and Residences. Pink clouds dotted the early-morning sky, and the lights of distant vessels bobbed on the dark horizon of the Atlantic. Collectively, almost intuitively, they inhaled the sea air, knowing they would never smell it again. They knew Paradise had seventy-two virgins, but there was no theological commentary on whether it had a beach. Or even a pool. They slid into the car, closing the doors gently, Pervez at the wheel, Hassan next to him, and Achmed and Azad in the backseat. Hassan couldn’t resist turning his head and taking his own final look at the towel hut standing in the glare of a single spotlight, a light that grew dimmer as they drove out of the lot.

Their orders were to move the cell to an industrial park in Miami, closer to the presidential debate. Fakhir, the Martyrs of Militancy cell manager/waiter, had procured a warehouse where the cell would be sequestered for the next three days. This phase was the most critical of any suicide bombing operation. Most suicide bombings fizzled in the final days, when the “suicide” part became more real to the bomber. A special place was needed where Fakhir could keep his eye on the bombers and they could keep their eyes on one another, ensuring no second thoughts—no dropping out—limiting loose talk that could be overheard by the wrong people. For the next three days they would eat together, sleep together, plan together, and dream about virgins together.

As Pervez steered onto Collins Avenue, Hassan sensed tension in the car.

Achmed said, “Turn on the radio.”

Pervez pressed the radio’s scan button, and the Caddy was filled with bursts of Latin music, then pop rock, then angry conservatives, and, finally, gospel preaching.

“Switch to another station,” said Azad.

“I want to hear this,” Pervez insisted.

Why? Hassan wondered.

“Put on some music,” Azad insisted. “Put on some Beyoncé.”

“I hate Beyoncé!” Pervez said. “Besides, I am the driver and the driver decides what to listen to. And I choose this.”

“And I choose to tell you to pull over so I can get out!” blurted Azad.

The car fell silent, except for the staticky voice of the preacher, who had finished with the Jews and was now moving on to the homosexuals. Hassan knew Muslims couldn’t be far behind in the pastor’s hate parade.

Pervez turned his head toward Hassan, as if to ask for guidance. “Keep driving,” Hassan ordered. “Everyone use your breathing exercises. Like Rona instructed us.”

Something is wrong, he thought. A sense of doubt was corroding the mission. For that split second when Azad demanded that they pull over, there was an unspoken relief in the car. As if the best course to Paradise was a U-turn. Even Hassan thought, What’s better, to sunburn at a hotel or to burn in hell?

He felt a sudden urge, and reached into the glove compartment for his Qur’an. He leafed across worn, dog-eared pages and his eyes scanned type-print faded from fingertips that had swept across the words for so many years in search of comfort.

Hassan silently read: “Oh you who believe! What is the matter with you, that, when you are asked to go forth in the cause of Allah, you cling heavily to the earth? Unless you go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty . . .”

In other words, go forth, Pervez!

The pastor began reviewing the range of foreign policy options in Baghdad: “Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword!”

Hassan flipped some pages. “And slay them wherever you find them and drive them out of the places whence they drive you out . . .”

The preacher cried: “And Jee-suss said: ‘Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword!’ America, it is time for the sword!”

Hassan found this passage: “Smite you above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them.”

The preacher countered: “Fear God who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Hassan read: “I will punish them with severe chastisement in this world and in the Hereafter . . .”

And so it went. Passage versus passage, attack and counterattack, violence against violence, now and forever. An eye for an eye and a truth for a truth.

Hassan continued scanning, desperate for a particular passage about the seventy-two virgins that awaited him. But there was nothing. Sure, there were some references to Paradise, mentions of ornate decor and fine wines, and one’s choice of fruit and meat. And there was something about dark-eyed, untouched maidens, which had potential. But Hassan couldn’t find anything that pointed to seventy-two virgins on the menu. Maybe it is all-inclusive, Hassan thought, like at the resort, which troubled him. Because the joke at the resort was that all-inclusive meant all-out sucker.

He turned off the radio. The car rolled from one paradise to another in silence, and the words of the pastor and the Qur’an tumbled together in Hassan’s mind.

Sitting inside a retrofitted U-Haul van, Alonso Diaz reported into a microphone, “Vehicle proceeding south on Collins Avenue.” It was the most popular radio traffic report in America that morning.

In Washington, Bill Sully watched a monitor with a dot moving slowly across a map, transmitted by a Species Management Surveillance drone purloined from the US Park Police in a trade for three FDA analysts and a recently intercepted shipment of Cuban cigars.

In Melville, Long Island, Tom Fairbanks watched another GPS image. There was Morris Feldstein’s car. Starting another week of travel across Long Island’s North Shore. With a detour ahead.