Countdown in Cairo

SEVEN

The car carrying Nagib was in New York City within five hours. The car traveled not to Manhattan, the city of skyscrapers, the upscale, and tourists, but rather to Brooklyn and a neighborhood known as Prospect Heights.

Prospect Heights lies adjacent to Prospect Park, between Park Slope and Crown Heights. It is surrounded by the finest cultural and recreational institutions in Brooklyn-the Brooklyn Museum, the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, the Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It is a polyglot area, with a typically New York mix of everything, notably people from the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East. The tenor of neighborhoods change from block to block; boarded up, burned-out structures defaced with graffiti stand next to newly renovated apartment complexes with glass elevators and rooftop gardens.

Nagib’s car stopped at a three-story tenement on Lincoln Place. His driver guided him inside to the second-floor home of a man named Hassan, who tearfully embraced Nagib. Hassan was Nagib’s uncle, and he too had come to America illegally seven years ago.

The uncle now had a new ID and a social security card. He had married an American woman of Lebanese descent and was legal to stay. Now he ran a small store and a small cell of conspirators. The uncle’s home was a halfway stop to Nagib’s destination. Hassan served Nagib lunch and provided him with some changes of clothing to take with him. From a safe concealed under the floorboards of a closet, he also provided him with a Chinese-made pistol and a silencer. They went to the basement of the building where there were sandbags and concrete walls. Hassan had built a makeshift shooting gallery there. The man who had guided Nagib this far through his journey gave Nagib a nod, and the traveler took several minutes to practice with his new weapon.

Then a new driver appeared with a different car, a battered 1990 Taurus with a New York license. Nagib climbed in with his new driver, who wanted to be known simply as Rashaad. He was dark-skinned and seemed more American than the previous one. He spoke Arabic with a Saudi accent, and for that reason Nagib didn’t like him.

A few minutes later they were on an expressway, going through a long tunnel. Then they were in an area of oil refineries in northern New Jersey, continuing south. They passed Philadelphia by 2:30 in the afternoon and Baltimore two hours after that. Nagib said little on this leg of the journey. Rashaad said even less. Halfway there, Nagib reached into his pocket. Folded up with some American money was a crinkled photograph of his wife, a pretty woman of twenty-four in a green prayer shawl.

The driver glanced over and spoke in Arabic.

“Put that away,” Rashaad said. “You shouldn’t even have that. I should take it from you and burn it.”

“You try to take it and I’ll break your wrist,” Nagib said. “Then I’ll break your neck.”

Rashaad swore bitterly at him but didn’t do anything. Nagib then thought better of things and put the picture away. There was an old Arab proverb: Me and my brother against my cousin, but me and my cousin against a Christian.

He spoke the proverb aloud, but the Saudi only glowered. Nagib might not have liked his partner, but there was no need to make an extra enemy either.

They continued on in silence.

There was little to talk about and little to joke about. But there was much to think about and much to plan.