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By the time Kara pulled up to the mansion’s front gate, Zain had already left for work.
Instead of looking at the guard through the slit in her scarf, Kara pretended to be looking for something in the bag the housekeeper had left in the car. Kara waved at the guard in lieu of a formal salutation, still looking down in the bag next to her, searching intently for something that wasn’t lost.
The guard didn’t appear alarmed by the informality. He simply pressed the button to raise the arm separating the estate from the world outside the property.
With the understanding that while her ultra-white skin was fairly well covered with bronze makeup, her green eyes would be a dead giveaway, Kara kept her head low as she drove up the long driveway.
So far so good, Kara thought to herself. Gaining access to the property was one major objective that had been accomplished without any issues. She hoped it was a good omen of what was yet to come.
It was a cloudless day with nothing but blue skies and sunshine. The marble façade of the mansion gleamed like polished jewels. The perfectly groomed bushes and trees surrounding the property made the mansion appear perfect. It was a place so normal that nothing bad could go on there, and Kara assumed nothing bad did go on here. All the bad stuff happened hundreds, or even thousands of miles, away from this palace, orchestrated by the bad man who lived here.
Kara almost made a full circle around the driveway and stopped the car so its nose was pointed toward the main gate. Leaving everything in the car, Kara walked up to the door, entered the four-digit code provided to her by the housekeeper and let herself into the mansion. No one came to the door to greet her.
The entrance hall of the home was built to impress. The outside marble embellishments were a different shade than the marble that ensconced the interior of the home. A circular stairway led to the top floor. The stairs were yet a different shade of marble. Kara looked down at the creamy-looking marble where she stood. It had black lightning bolts of color throughout, giving the room an alpha male vibe. Kara turned, giving the residence a 360°. The walls were painted off-white and had a smattering of mismatched artwork—some oils, some watercolors, and even a few charcoal sketches from various artists. She didn’t know much about art so the artwork could have been expensive. She really didn’t care. The home itself appeared to be clean and tidy, but of course the banker employed a full-time housecleaner, so she expected as much.
Kara recalled the schedule the housekeeper had related to her. She wished she had taken more time to question the woman. One question she failed to ask was where are the cleaning supplies? Kara had determined her best course of action was to immerse herself in the task of cleaning. This way she could snoop while pretending to clean. She guessed either the kitchen or the laundry room held what she needed. In front of her twere four possible directions to go. To her left and right, long hallways led to opposite wings of the home. Stairways led to the upper floors. Under the stairway was a big room. She passed from the entry hall and walked into the great room with its view towards the dining area. The room was indeed great—with high ceilings, high walls, more artwork, and well-worn dark brown leather furniture. The floor looked like new shiny marble. A giant area rug, probably Persian, had been centered in the middle of the room to bring some warmth to the massive space. Glancing briefly into the dining room, Kara could see it doubled as a playroom. Interesting use of space.
A connecting hallway at the back of the great room led in both left and right directions. She had a 50/50 chance of finding the kitchen on the first try. Calculating it would be near the dining room, Kara went left down a short hallway that ended in a dazzling kitchen. Kara was accustomed to luxurious homes. The kitchen did not impress her. She had been raised as an only child to very wealthy parents who had a kitchen very much like the one she was in now. Her family also had a housekeeper, and if Kara remembered correctly, the cleaning supplies were stored in her home’s walk-in-pantry. Kara found the pantry door, switched on the light, and stepped inside. She found nothing except food. Nowhere did she see the cleaning supplies. She hadn’t seen the children or their teacher either.
Kara left the kitchen and wandered a little further down the hallway until she discovered the laundry room. On the left side of the large room was a wall of cabinets. Opening the first of many, Kara discovered an assortment of laundry detergents. Opening the next cabinet, she felt she was getting warmer. Inside were some dustpans, whisk brooms, and brushes of various types. Up a little higher was a collection of small, medium, and extra-large flashlights. She struck gold on the next cabinet, a floor-to-ceiling compartment that had mops and brooms on the lower shelf and dusters on the upper shelf. Deciding that she would look just as convincing with a duster as she would carrying a pail of water, Kara removed the largest of the feather dusters, closed the cabinet, and began dusting her way toward the other side of the home.
It was eerily quiet. Kara thought she should have heard the children by now, but she hadn’t heard a single human voice since she had entered. The great room looked out at the backyard porch through a wall of tall glass sliding doors. The exterior covered space was so deep it had indoor furniture grouped in a large, sunken pit surrounding a fireplace. Beyond the furniture, she saw a guard patrolling the backyard. He wasn’t outwardly displaying a firearm. The man was dressed in a black pinstriped suit that probably concealed some kind of weapon and had some type of communication device stuck into his right ear. A wire ran down the back of his neck and disappeared under his coat. Kara dusted some of the artwork while watching the guard.
He seemed to have some sort of pattern established. The guard would step into the shade under the porch and fiddle with his cell phone. After about five minutes, he made a single pass around the backyard before he returned for another five minutes of cell phone time. Kara had thought some parts of her job sucked, but the life of a backyard guard looked dreadfully boring. Looking on the positive side of things, if she decided to leave the CIA, she could at least qualify as a backyard guard. It had kind of a nice ring to it, as if it could be a pop song.
Kara made up a melody and hummed a few test bars of Backyard Guard to herself, trying to break the tension and fill the room with a soothing human sound. She halfheartedly continued to dust, all the while surreptitiously watching the guard to see if he ever deviated from his pattern. He never did.
Kara had made up the first verse of Backyard Guard before she decided she had watched the man long enough. It was time to find the location of the teacher and children.
I’m a terrorist in hiding and if you come a’ finding, you’ll meet my backyard guard.
If you want revenge, then first go through my friend, through my backyard guard.
Backyard guard.
You don’t want to mess with my
Backyard guard.
He’ll make you a mess, that’s my
Backyard guard.
Kara sang the song inside her head while she absentmindedly hummed the melody.
She dusted her way down one entire wing of the home. In that wing, she found several bedrooms, including Zain’s. Kara spent little time in them because there was nothing she saw that interested her. It was apparent none of the bedrooms belonged to the children. These were very plain with few decorations. Kara assumed they were used as guest bedrooms.
Kara thought she detected what looked like a security camera at both ends of the hallway. It was nothing more than a black dot embedded in the wall but on closer inspection, the dark camera lens was very apparent against the off-white walls.
Assuming she was alone in the home, at least alone downstairs, she walked through the other wing of the home, dusting as she inventoried the rooms she passed. She spotted two other bedrooms that had been converted into a home office and an exercise room.
After fully investigating the ground floor, Kara ascended the front stairway located in the middle of the mansion, dusting artwork as she climbed. At the top of the stairs was another large playroom attached to a room that looked like a den. The toys were appropriate for the young children, and the newspapers in the den focused on finances, appropriate for someone within the banking industry. She assumed that Zain Shallah hung out in the den while the children played in the toy room next to him, close enough to interact with them, but far enough away to read the papers or watch TV.
The floor of the playroom was littered with toys. While Kara picked up the toys and placed them on shelves and in toy boxes, she listened for the sounds of a teacher and a two-student classroom. She heard nothing.
Kara scanned the room and saw two more cameras mounted in the wall above each hallway entrance.
With the toys stowed away, Kara went to the recliner in the den, folded the newspapers, and placed them neatly on the end table. She found an empty glass on the end table and rinsed it out and set it on the shelf at the wet bar with the matching glasses. She looked at all the various liquors in the wet bar and considered poisoning the banker, but that was a long shot. There were too many variables. For example, what type of alcohol did he drink? How often? Did anyone else drink with him or maybe before him? A guest dropping dead before the banker had a chance to drink would surely foil that scheme. She decided her current plan had the highest probability of achieving her goal, but still, she estimated the odds were still close to 50/50.
Again, Kara found she had two options, the hallway to the right or the hallway to the left of the main stairs. She went left. She was no more than halfway down the long hall when she heard the faint voice of an adult male. She passed a closed door to her left, closing in on the sound. It was a deep voice that she could hear well enough to discern the man was speaking English. Kara slowly and deliberately walked toward the voice. Now she could make out sentences. The man was teaching the kids history.
“...so, in 2001, the United States yet again invades another country. This time it was Afghanistan. They came with the intention of killing our brothers in the Sunni Taliban government...”
Kara quickly realized the children were being taught a revised history of hate. The history of why Shias should be killed and the superior sect of Islam was Sunni. He further explained how Americans bore evil intentions. She assumed that anyone who didn’t follow the Sunni doctrines was being vilified. It made Kara’s stomach turn. She wondered how much of the kids’ day was spent on brainwashing and ushering forth yet another generation of terrorists.
The children did not ask questions. They listened intently.
“Sunnis are the keepers of the faith,” the man continued with his lesson. “That is the reason why 90% of Muslims are Sunnis. That is 1.5 billion people who believe Sunnis are right and Shiites are wrong.”
The teacher continued to babble on about how the Shiites were a more pernicious enemy than the Americans, but the Americans wanted to strip the world of religion.
Kara wanted to run in and take the children away from there, away from the horrible things they were being taught, but exposing herself to the teacher was not part of the plan. The teacher appeared to be the only other adult in the home. She passed by the open classroom door and glanced in. Kara saw the teacher in profile, as well as the children who sat at small desks facing the teacher. If they had seen the woman dressed in black from head to toe, they didn’t react in any manner. The teacher hadn’t stopped his lecture, so Kara continued down the hall in hopes of finding the kids’ rooms. She speculated that she might encounter the teacher maybe in the hallway or possibly in the kitchen when the children came down for lunch. She wanted to put that off for as long as possible. With the teacher being the only person between her and the success of her mission, the less interaction with the man the better.
Kara found the little girl’s bedroom. It was large like Kara’s bedroom had been when she was a little girl. The room was painted a soft pink and a few dolls were laying on the floor. Inside the closet, Kara discovered a pink backpack. She brought it out and placed a few of the dolls in it and put the rest on the shelf. A king-size bed didn’t begin to make a dent in the floor space of the room. As she straightened the bed, she found a stuffed bear under the covers. She added the bear to the backpack and finished making the bed. She opened a few drawers and put together a change of clothes and added that to the pack.
Once she was satisfied that everything in the girl’s room was in order, she switched off the light and walked further down the hall searching for the boy’s room. The next door down, she found it. On the floor were some Legos and some Matchbox cars. She added the toys to the pink backpack she had brought with her from the girl’s room. In it, she placed the stuffed purple dinosaur that was on his bed. Additionally, she put in a change of clothes. She quickly finished tidying up his room. Giving the room one last look, she was satisfied it was clean. Kara shut off the light and left.
For all of this to work, she had to play the part of the housekeeper right up until playtime was over.