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She flashed on her own children, Fahd and Aamina, back in Saudi Arabia, abandoned to her mother while Hala fought and sacrificed for God. Seeing her young son and daughter in her mind now, seeing them that last time in her husband’s arms, Hala felt a moment of desperate, almost crippling grief, but she quickly compartmentalized the emotion, used her husband’s death and the soon-to-be-eternal rift between her and her children to fuel her anger, and her will.
Her head felt light, speedy, undulating. Stuffing the scarf and sunglasses into the Macy’s bag, Hala understood that this was what it was like to be a martyr, to give one’s soul over to the Eternal One.
She was at peace with it, submissive even.
Hala looked around, spotted security cameras aimed at various angles inside the station. Before going in search of something to eat, she made a point of walking in front of each and every one of those cameras, looking right up into the lens and giving the people watching a nice icy smile.
CHAPTER
47
SHORTLY AFTER THE PECAN PIE WITH VANILLA ICE CREAM WAS DEMOLISHED AND the dishes cleared, Nana Mama began to read out loud from the King James Bible and the Gospel of Saint Luke: “‘And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.’”
My grandmother has been reading Luke’s account of Jesus’s birth after every Christmas dinner since I came to live with her, when I was ten. As exhausted as I was, hearing her recount the circumstances of Jesus’s birth, I felt rooted by the words of the Bible and connected by the strength of Nana Mama’s moving delivery. Bree was sitting in my lap, and I hugged her and laid my head against her back, listening to her heartbeat and feeling like I could drift off to sleep a very happy man.
But then my cell phone rang again.
Nana Mama stopped reading and shot me a withering look. I glanced at the caller ID. There was no name, but I knew that number, or a variation of it. The call was coming from someone inside the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where I used to work as a criminal profiler.
I winced at the reaction I knew I was going to get, but I whispered, “I have to take this. Keep going.”
Stonily, Bree stood to let me up. Stonily, Nana Mama read on, raising her voice as I left the room, calling after me as I headed into the kitchen: “‘And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.’”
“Alex Cross,” I said, kneading at the pain growing between my eyes.
“How fast can you get to Louisiana and D Street?” asked Ned Mahoney, an old friend and special agent I used to work cases with at the Bureau.
“Tomorrow,” I said, suppressing a yawn. “Maybe the day after.”
“I’m sending a car for you.”
“It’s Christmas.”
“I know it’s Christmas,” Mahoney snapped. “That’s why I need you.”
“Ned, I’ve got a very angry ninety-something-year-old grandmother shouting the Gospel of Saint Luke at me, and—”
“We think it’s Hala Al Dossari, Alex,” Mahoney said.
A chill spiked through me, got me wide awake. “You think Dr. Al Dossari’s at Louisiana and D?”
“Worse,” Mahoney said. “Inside Union Station. And she’s carrying a very big Macy’s shopping bag.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” Mahoney said. “I’m sending a four-wheel-drive vehicle to you. I expect you to get in it.”
He hung up as if there were no counterargument to be made.
Out in the dining room, my grandmother was still reading, even louder than before. “‘And the angel said to them, Fear not: for, behold—’”
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I returned to the dining room and Nana Mama stopped, studied me for a long moment, read it all in my body language. “Are you needed again, Alex?”
I saw faces clouding, my wife’s included.
“It’s a sad fact of life that not everyone believes in peace on earth and goodwill toward men,” I said. “The FBI’s sending a vehicle to pick me up.”
