The Faithful Spy

For Josh Goldsmith, the collapse of the ceiling came as a relief. Josh had the misfortune to be standing when the explosion occurred, so he took more than his share of shrapnel. Metal fragments from the van turned his face into a bloody pulp. A larger piece sliced into his stomach and cut his liver nearly in half. Lacerations covered his body. Fortunately, his agony lasted only a few seconds, until a slab of concrete from the ceiling crushed his skull. on hollywood boulevard it was just another Friday night. Convertibles and tricked-out pickups cruised slowly, bass thumping. The evening was unseasonably warm for April, and girls in thighhigh skirts flirted with boys in muscle shirts. A red Lamborghini Diablo competed for attention with a black Cadillac Escalade on gleaming twenty-six-inch rims. Tourists snapped pictures of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Near the corner of Hollywood and Ivar, dozens of kids had lined up to get into the Ivar, a restaurant and club that attracted the masses from the Valley. Across the boulevard, police barricades held back a hundred fans who’d shown up for the premiere of Number, a campy horror movie about a crazed accountant, at Cinespace, a movie theater in the same building as the Ivar. From a Nissan Altima parked two blocks east, Khadri watched Aziz’s van snake slowly west on Hollywood. Aziz was running a few minutes late, though Khadri didn’t expect him to have a problem. The police and firefighters would just be reaching the synagogue. They would need a minute to realize they were looking at a crime scene, and their immediate response would be to lock down the city’s other synagogues, not to look for a bomb in Hollywood. Still, Khadri wished Aziz would hurry.

Khadri had parked outside the blast zone but close enough to feel the bomb for himself. He knew he should have left Los Angeles already, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to see his handiwork firsthand. He had his escape route mapped, of course: east to Phoenix, Arizona. He would stay for a few days — no need to rush—

then leave the Altima at Sky Harbor International and fly to Mexico City. No one would notice the car for weeks, and it couldn’t be connected to him anyway. Khadri looked at the men and women walking past his car. Those heading east would live; those walking west might die. Their fates were no concern of his, he thought, any more than American generals worried about what happened to the inhabitants of the cities they attacked. This was war, and sometimes war killed people who didn’t think of themselves as combatants. These people weren’t innocents, though they preferred to imagine themselves that way; no one in America was an innocent.

He drummed his fingers against the wheel, anxious to feel the blast.

arms folded, bennett stood outside the Paradise Club, a half block west of the corner of Hollywood and Ivar. Paradise was harder to get into than the Ivar, so the lines were smaller but just as unruly. Tonight a crowd had formed early.

“Puta!”

“Asshole!”

Near the front of the line, two guys in their early twenties, one white, the other Hispanic, got in each other’s faces. Bennett stepped forward. “Easy,” he said. They appealed to him simultaneously.

“This maricón pushed me,” the Hispanic guy said. “He was checking out my girlfriend.”

“That fat bitch?”

Just like that the white guy stepped up and swung wildly. Bennett grabbed his arm before he could connect. This crap didn’t usually start until later. In the distance Bennett heard sirens screaming west. A lot of sirens.

The white kid tried to pull his arm from Bennett’s hand. “What’s your name?” Bennett said.

“Mitch.”

“Mitch, you’re walking this way,” Bennett said, and pointed west. He turned to the Hispanic guy. “What’s your name?”

“Ricky.”

“Ricky, that way.” He pointed east.

“Man—”

Bennett shook his head. “Start walking.”

They looked at Bennett’s huge arms and walked. He watched them go until the blare of horns down the block grabbed his attention. Hollywood was always loud on Friday nights, but this was ridiculous.

cold air poured out of the vents of the Mitsubishi panel truck, but Aziz couldn’t stop sweating. The cab stank with the acrid smell of his fear, overwhelming the faint scent of the rosewater he had dabbed on himself as he prepared to make his journey to paradise. Nine forty-five, five minutes late, and he still wasn’t there. Far worse, he could feel his resolve weakening. He had felt confident in the motel room, but as the moment approached he could no longer control his terror. Would it hurt when he pushed the button? What if he didn’t get to heaven? He knew he would, of course. The Koran said so. Abu Mustafa said so. He would be a shahid, a martyr, surrounded by the most beautiful virgins, drinking the purest water, eating the sweetest dates.

“Allah hath bought from the believers their lives and their wealth because the Garden shall be theirs,” the ninth sura said. “They shall fight in the way of Allah and shall slay and be slain.”