The Identity Mine

XLVII

The family was seated on a wide leather couch in front of an enormous television screen that spanned an entire half of one wall, the screen a concave that prevented any reflections from marring the ultra — high resolution image presented upon it.

The carpets beneath Abrahem Nassir’s feet were thick, plush, a light cream color devoid of even the slightest stain. The magnolia walls were tastefully decorated with photographs and paintings, softly lit by the sunlight streaming in through broad windows that overlooked the immaculate lawns and the woods beyond.

‘You don’t know me.’

Abrahem Nassir stood to one side of the screen, knowing that his voice was being broadcast live to the delegates inside the White House. Abrahem knew, of course, that live did not exactly mean “live” any more. The television networks always ran on a thirty second delay, ensuring that they could cut the feed if anything untoward occurred during a broadcast. However here at the former President’s home, the feed to the White House was both truly live and direct. It could be cut off, of course, but Abrahem knew that the security agencies would want the feed to remain live as they attempted to make contact with him and prevent a tragedy.

The former President of the United States had not held office for some years now and had aged considerably. Abrahem, a man in the prime of his life, had been surprised by how short the former President was. He had expected a giant of a man surrounded by an aura of potency and competence. Instead he was more than a little disappointed that the diminutive individual who confronted him was both softly spoken and probably weighed less than a hundred eighty pounds, his hair silvery gray and his back slightly hunched with age.

‘No,’ the President replied, the barrel of Abrahem’s gun aimed directly at his head. ‘I don’t know who you are. Why are you in my home?’

Abrahem leaned back on an expensive, polished wooden cabinet that lined the wall behind him. It would not have surprised him to learn that the cabinet cost more than he would have earned in five years in Iraq. He would not rush this moment, for Abrahem knew that it would be his last. There would be no survivors in this confrontation, and if he faltered then for him at least America would win again when their soldiers and police stormed the house and gunned him down with their patriotic fury. Abrahem would ensure that they would never get the chance, for he would personally bring this to an end much sooner.

‘Why did you enter my home?’ Abrahem challenged.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No,’ Abrahem agreed, ‘I don’t suppose that you do. Allow me to explain. You ordered your country to war against Iraq and invaded my country. Before doing so you embarked upon a campaign that you proudly named shock and awe. Do you remember that, Mister President?’

The President nodded.

‘Why did you do it, Mister President?’

‘I don’t have to answer to you.’

Abrahem smiled, pushed off the cabinet and took three long paces to where a young girl, perhaps twelve years old, was perched nervously on the edge of a couch. Abrahem grabbed her by her hair and yanked her to her feet as he pushed the pistol against the side of her head.

‘Leave her alone!’ the President snapped as he struggled to his feet. ‘You can do what you like to me, but leave my family alone!’

‘Oh, Mister President,’ Abrahem murmured, ‘if only you had given a thought to how many Iraqi fathers, mothers, sons and daughters cried the same thing all those years ago. Now tell me, why did you invade my country?’

‘I did what had to be done for the security of our nation.’

‘You lied,’ Abrahem hissed. ‘Your people lied, your intelligence services lied, your politicians lied, and your lies cost a hundred thousand Iraqi men, women and children their lives. Shock and awe, quite a title, no? And what did you intend that shock and awe to achieve in Iraq, Mister President?’

The President swallowed thickly as he recognized where the conversation was heading.

‘It was designed to negatively affect the will, perception and understanding of an adversary to fight or respond to American strategic policy, to render them unwilling to resist through overwhelming displays of power.’

Abrahem nodded quietly as he echoed the President’s words, the girl’s hair still wrapped tightly around his bunched fist.

‘Overwhelming displays of power. It must have been easy Mister President, to have given those orders while sitting in the Oval Office, far from danger. I wonder if you ever thought about how it feels to be on the other end of a shock and awe campaign? Have you ever wondered how it would feel to see your children’s bodies blasted into pieces by bombs?’

The President’s stoic demeanor began to crumble.

‘Leave my granddaughter alone,’ he croaked.

Abrahem looked at the young girl, her long brown hair and pale, soft skin.

‘They burned, most of them,’ he said idly as he stroked her hair. ‘The bombs usually cooked them alive, but of course they don’t show that sort of thing on your televisions. It might offend.’ Abrahem glared at the President as rage overcame him. ‘They don’t show what really happens when America invades another country, or when Israel bombs hospitals and civilians in Gaza, because they don’t want your poor American viewers to get upset!’

Abrahem yanked the girl’s head back and rammed the pistol against her jaw.

‘Are you getting upset, Mister President?!’

The President nodded as tears began streaming from his eyes. ‘Yes.’

Ethan killed the engine of a stolen Honda motorbike he had liberated from a parking lot in Sumner Row, jumped off the saddle and slipped through the security gates of the mansion. He ran up the lawns at a sprint as he spotted the blood stains splattering across the asphalt near the empty guard house.

The sunlight cast long shadows across the lawns, the horizon blazing with golden light and the mansion aglow with an orange haze as he hurried toward it, running in a low crouch and hoping that he could reach the walls without being spotted by either Abrahem or anybody else the terrorist might have brought with him.

The front door to the mansion was closed so Ethan instead skirted the walls, moving cautiously past each window and peeking in as he sought some sign of the occupants and prayed that Abrahem had not yet managed to gain access to the family. He made only another few steps before he came to a large bay window that looked into a massive lounge, one wall dominated by a huge widescreen television. Inside and sitting on the couch were several members of the former President’s family, and standing with a young girl in his grasp was Abrahem Nassir.

Ethan’s heart plunged as he realized that his earlier hunch had been correct. Nassir was not a man who wanted to kill people remotely, using drones or cerebral implants or anything else. Abrahem Nassir wanted to wreak his revenge with his bare hands. He wanted to feel the life draining from his victims, as he had witnessed it draining from members of his own family so long ago in the burning wastelands of Basra in the wake of America’s campaign. The incumbent President of the United States had never been his main target: the man who had led the administration when Iraq had been humbled before America’s military might had been the President that Nassir sought, the President he held responsible for so many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives lost in the conflict.

Ethan knew that by now the police and the intelligence agencies would be swarming toward the house and that Abrahem knew it too. The Iraqi’s plan did not involve his escape from the house for he knew that it was impossible. Abrahem intended to die here, and Ethan guessed that he intended to take the former President and his family with him.

Ethan moved on past the window and scouted around the back of the house. It was sufficiently large that he felt certain he could break into the building from the far side without being heard. He could only hope that any security alarms would be of the silent type that would alert the authorities without revealing Ethan’s presence to Abrahem.

Two birds, one stone.

The rear of the house featured beautifully manicured gardens, tall hedges and a fountain that sparkled like a pile of shivering golden diamonds in the sunlight as Ethan eased his way past the most obvious entrance point, a set of French doors that led into what looked like an office. Instead, he headed for a smaller window in a door that appeared to open into a kitchen judging by the food waste and recycling trash cans arranged neatly against the wall.

Ethan grabbed a rock from the ornate hedges nearby and then hurried across to the window. He pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around the rock, and then after a quick glance into the kitchen to ensure that it was deserted, he smashed the rock into the window’s edge.

The first blow did nothing and neither did the second, but Ethan’s third blow fractured the window with a crackle of splintered glass. Ethan used the rock to knock more and more of the glass out until he could reach in and grab at the handle and locks. Within moments he had unlocked the door and opened it from the inside, and he slipped inside the kitchen and closed the door behind him.

The interior of the house was silent, large enough that whatever was taking place in the lounge Ethan wasn’t close enough to hear it. He pulled his shirt back on and pulled his pistol from its holster, checked the magazine before he began easing into the house.

The corridor outside the kitchen was equally silent, sunlight streaming in beams across paneled walls, dust motes drifting like lost stars as Ethan crept forward, the pistol held low in both hands as he advanced. Paintings hung on the walls, aged oils speaking of Colonial vessels striking out across turbulent oceans in search of new lands, the New World.

Ethan reached another corridor and turned left, heading toward the front of the house and the lounge he had seen on the way in. Now he could hear something, voices in the distance. At first they were mere whispers but then he caught the tension in the short, sharp words as an old man replied to a question demanded of him.

Ethan slowed, listening intently as he approached a large foyer where twin staircases ascended to the upper floors either side of a large painting of what looked like Pickett’s Charge, Gettysburg, the Union’s rifles repelling the Confederate’s infantry assault.

Ethan saw on his left the entrance to the lounge, the doorway wide open. From his vantage point he could see some of the President’s family sitting on the couch and he could finally hear Abrahem Nassir’s voice clearly as it carried out into the hall.

‘Are you getting upset, Mister President?!’

Ethan crossed the hall and hugged the wall beside the entrance, his eyes closed as he focused in on Abrahem’s voice. He was still standing where Ethan had seen him from outside, tucked up close to the television, most likely with the girl still in his grasp. Ethan had not been able to see a weapon in Abrahem’s hands but he had to assume a pistol, or at the very least a knife, was the assassin’s weapon of choice.

Ethan knew that he would not be able to shoot accurately enough to hit Abrahem and kill him outright without risking the life of his captive. Such sharp — shooting was the stuff of television legend, not the real world, as was the chance of a single shot dropping a subject there and then. Criminals had been known to fight after taking shotgun shrapnel in the head, others had taken sixty rounds and lived to tell the tale and in one remarkable engagement a US soldier in Vietnam fought for six hours despite nearly forty serious bullet, shrapnel and bayonet wounds, as well as performing an eighty yard run with a rifle round in one knee.

Ethan kept his eyes closed as he heard Abrahem Nassir’s voice.

‘I shall not leave this life without putting you through the same pain, grief and suffering that I and so many others have endured at your hands.’

The response came immediately, grief stricken.

‘Please, leave her be!’

Ethan shoved his pistol into the back of his jeans beneath his shirt, turned and stepped into plain view.

‘Hello Abrahem.’