The Gun Dog of Baghdad: The 56th Man, #4

By J. Clayton Rogers

Once again, Ari Ciminon (Ghaith Ibrahim, The 56th Man) sets out to defeat his foes. For almost a year he has been identifying radical insurgents for the U.S. Government. Only now, he has a new adversary: his employer. Ever since his arrival in Virginia he has suspected a hidden nemesis: someone, or some entity, who seeks his destruction. Can he turn the tables on him? Or them? Confronted by the CIA, the FBI, the Treasury Department, CENTCOM, the U.S. Deputy Marshal and even the local social services agency, Ari brings in his friends, Abu Jasim and Ahmad, to help him wreak his own special vengeance. But the clock is ticking, the odds are stacked against him, and Ari's lust for justice could very well land him in a grave….

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Clayton Rogers
• Release date: May 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781386718420

J. Clayton Rogers

I am the author of more than ten novels. I was born and raised in Virginia, where I currently reside. I was First-Place Winner of the Hollins Literary Festival a number of years ago. Among the judges were Thomas (Little Big Man) Berger and R.M.W. Dillard, poet and husband of the writer Annie Dillard.

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Prologue

Richmond – April, 2008

U.S. Deputy Marshals Karen Sylvester and Fred Donzetti had raced halfway across Richmond to reach this point on Route 1, five miles north of the city.  By all rights, Karen should not have been in the Civic at all.  She was on administrative leave.  Less than 48 hours ago, in the line of duty, she had shot and killed a man—in a nursing home, of all places.  It was a righteous kill.  There was no question but that her action would be validated.  Not only that, but she would have earned the questionable reputation as one dangerous lady.  More than one of her male peers had slapped her on the back, only to raise their hands in mock horror, as if to yell 'don't shoot!'  But she did not feel anything like V.I. Warshawski.  In fact, she felt like someone who had swallowed Jell-O laced with sulfuric acid.  It fluttered indigestibly, floating from one side of her stomach to the other, burning the lining with excruciating deftness.

She had been sitting across from Fred at a Burger King when his phone rang.  His eyes widened as he listened.  He hung up.

That was the home office, he said, taking out his GPS tracker and studying the screen.  Ari's on the move.

Karen swore.  We ordered him to stay put in his house!

Well, he's supposed to be wearing that ankle monitor, and the ankle monitor signal says...  Fred held up the tracker display for Karen to see.

He's getting on the expressway!  That's only a mile from here!  Karen jumped up.  Come on!

What do you mean? Fred scowled.  You're on administrative—

He howled as Karen began pulling him up from his seat by his ear.

No, Karen!  No!  No!

Yes, Karen! Karen hissed.  Yes!  Yes!

Some of the customers laughed.  Others did not wait to see the outcome of the argument, but began piling out of the restaurant.

What, pain isn't enough? said Karen, hanging tenaciously to his ear.  Do I have to blackmail you, too?  I'm on AL because of a shooting!  You're not supposed to be sitting down with me for a Whopper!

I came here because we're friends!

There's no friends when it comes to Ari, Karen said.  Come on!

Ari Ciminon was Karen's primary assignment, a man for whose safety she and Fred were responsible.  He was only one of a half-dozen foreign and domestic witnesses under her care.  It was unreasonable to expect her to cover so much territory, but the assumption was that the witnesses would participate in their own safety.  Which meant not chasing after mass murderers, not hosing down drug kingpins, not kidnapping members of the Saddam Hussein family hiding in the American countryside...or, she half-suspected, sniffing out rogue nuclear weapons.  Sometimes it seemed to Karen that Ari had his finger on the hair-trigger of world destruction.  In Iraq, he had been known as Ghaith Ibrahim.  Over the last few days she had learned much more about him, none of it reassuring.  The encounter with Federal and military authorities in Stafford County had done nothing to stifle her qualms.

Karen figured Ari for a Sunni, since he had nothing good to say about the Shia.  Ari himself claimed to have no religion.  But Karen had seen him for one brief moment with his wife, and knew that wasn't true....

Fred gave in, as she knew he would.  Within twenty minutes they were headed north on Route 1.  But there was a big problem.  When they came within forty yards of the signal, Ari's white Scion was nowhere in sight.  Karen began to growl.

Stop it, said Fred.  You aren't going to bite me, are you?

I might.  Karen leaned forward.  Why didn't you let me drive?

Compromise, right?  You blackmail, I drive.

I can't see past this dumbass Hummer.

There's a red Focus in front of the Hummer, and a beat-up old Falcon in front of him.  There is a shit-assed bike in front of that—no wait, it's a BMW.  Man, he should clean that thing up.  You don't treat a sweet machine like that—

Next? Karen snapped, looking down at the tracker.

A Golf.  Fred glanced at several cars passing him.  You don't think he's in the left lane?

The signal's holding steady and everyone in the left lane is passing us.  My money's on the VW, but—  She slammed her fist on the dashboard.  Ari, you fucker, you've slipped the monitor, haven't you?

You think? Fred asked nervously.

You saw him at Atassi's, right?  And I saw him at the nursing home.  And the whole time, the GPS log said he was wandering around in his house.

I don't know, said Fred uncertainly.  These GPS gizmos aren't all that accurate.  Look at all the times we lose the signal.

"We have a signal."

Don't fry a circuit.  OK, we have a signal.  Maybe he's up ahead a little further.  He glanced in his rearview mirror.  Maybe he's behind us...

Shit!  Karen could not resist a backward look.  Goddammit Ari...

I'm Fred.

"He's supposed to be doing one thing...one thing!  He's supposed to sit at his computer all day and study pictures sent to him from the battlefield.  Identify the bad guys and advise CENTCOM.  That's it!"

But no... said Fred, thinking he might calm his partner by predicting her next words.

It didn't work.

But no, you've got to go off and try to get yourself killed.  She shifted interlocutors, from the invisible to the visible.  You saw his face last month.

He said he fell—

That was a beating, one helluva beating!  You know it!  But how did it happen, huh?  Can you tell me that?  And who was able to give him a beating like that?  Can you tell me?  I guess not.  You weren't there in Stafford with me.  That was one revealing summit.  Boy, our Prince Charming is the sickest puppy this side of Al Capone.  If you'd heard what I heard, your dick would have dropped off.

I'm glad I wasn't there.

"Oh, you'll hear, as soon as I get clearance for you.  You should know.  Then you could protect yourself.  Oh, Ross, why did you do this to me?"  She was referring to her immediate supervisor.

Fred thought of the moment when Ari showed him the gun he was packing.  He had not told Karen about that day at McDonald's, and was now doubly-determined to remain silent about it.

I don't think Ross knew half of what he was getting us into, he said.

I'm sure he didn't, but—

I see, said Fred, tapping his brake, then pressing harder.

Someone's stopping.  There's no traffic light here.

It's the Volkswagen.

The Falcon sputtered incontinently, then found a gap in the left lane and puttered out, bypassing the slowly drifting Golf.  The irate driver of the Focus honked his horn, then found an opening in the northbound traffic and swerved out, nearly colliding with the angry Hummer roaring past the obstacle.

The biker remained behind the VW, as if hoping the driver would come to his senses and forge ahead.  But when the Golf came to a complete stop, he made a gesture of frustration and hooked right into the gravel, the BMW howling a vehicular oath.

Now what? said Fred, hitting his emergency flash as he stopped.

It's him, said Karen, lifting the tracker close to her eyes.  It can't be anyone—

There was a distinctive pop.

Karen and Fred exchanged glances.  Drawing her gun, Karen bailed out.  Fred checked his rearview, waiting before exposing his open door to the swarm of angry drivers in the fast lane.  Seeing an opening, he jumped out and drew his gun.

Karen reached the passenger door of the VW.  Inside, she saw a man slumped between the steering wheel and the cracked, blood-splattered driver window.  She planted a hand on the passenger window, confirming it was closed.  Fred arrived on the other side.  He could see nothing through the gore on the driver window, which was also completely closed.

Karen saw no gun on the seat that might indicate suicide.

They were looking at an impossibility.

Karen pressed both hands against the glass and peered closely.  The driver's head was an indescribable mess.  She looked down at the hands, then back at the remains above the neck.  The complexion was unmistakable.  Not black.  Not white.  Certainly not Assyrian, in spite of Ari's protests to the contrary.

Ari! she shouted.

Ari! she screamed.

Then she whirled.  In front of her woods stretched fifty yards to either side.  The perfect sanctuary for a sniper.

Making her a perfect target....

Chapter One

Richmond - Summer 2006

A little over a year before Ari Ciminon arrived in Richmond, Virginia, Dr. Ahmed Mataria surveyed the queue in front of him with vague unease and profound comfort.  There was a smattering of hijabs and thobes that were, to his thinking, not at all out of place.  Nor did the Western-style clothes worn by most of the immigrants give him a sartorial itch.  His rumpled suit might be read as a sign of disrespect for his new homeland.  In reality, he had been wary of the competency of the interns and PA's on the night shift at the hospital and had felt compelled to sleep overnight on his office cot as he kept an eye on a troublesome heart valve.  It would do his reputation no good if one of his patients died the day before he became an American.

Otherwise, a tidy cleanliness was the order of the day for the people shuffling towards the security kiosk at the Federal Court Building, its seven stories only recently raised from the shabby ranks of greasepit convenience stores, headshops and thrifts on downtown Broad Street.  The spanking new marble and 100-foot tall atrium encouraged snappy apparel.  Dr. Mataria felt the brusque glance of a guard eyeing his wrinkled sports jacket.  This was minor.  The guard was more focused on the saris, Lehenga cholis, thobes, bright pink hanboks and hijabs.  But there were no all-encompassing veils.  The women from the Middle East were serious about becoming undisguised Americans—or cognizant of recent rulings against wearing a veil when getting one's photo ID.

Still, the doctor stood out like a sore, unmanicured thumb.  Not one to pay finicky attention to his wardrobe, Dr. Mataria assumed the jaundiced glance was SOP for government employees forced to deal with the tired and poor huddled masses.  The entire sour staff of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad might have been transferred en masse to Virginia, so far as he could see.

He was accompanied by one of his students, an aggressive intern who seemed to think he could score points with his teacher by witnessing the miraculous transfusion of tainted Arabic blood with USDA American.  A serious misconception, since the medical board of directors (some of whom were surprisingly young) was highly dubious about Dr. Mataria's own qualifications.  They had been told he had interned in Alexandria and practiced and taught at a prestigious university in Cairo.  Even so, they had looked down upon him.  Had they known the truth, his stock would have fallen through the basement.  Being a graduate of Iraqi Royal Medical College would have been a definite minus in their minds, and his internship at Al Madina a solid Strike Two.

Have you ever had dealings with terrorists?

Could lifting the mucky entrails of a wounded insurgent while searching for shrapnel be considered a form of intimacy?

And then came his transfer to Fallujah General Hospital, the graveyard of humanity where attacks came from every direction, where the morgue was glutted—and the morgue extended to streets and alleys.

Did you ever come into conflict with Coalition forces in your native country?

You wouldn't include that little tussle with a Marine Corps Scout, would you?  Would you?  He and his companions were, to my thinking and that of most of the civilized world, committing a war crime.

But no, he had the documents and CV to prove he was from Egypt.  A semi-stalwart ally of America.  And yet any good word he might proffer on a student's behalf could prove a dagger in that student's career.  Ahmed had heard doctors from around the world complain about America's refusal to recognize the credentials of foreign-trained MD's.  The country with one of the highest mortality rates among developed countries snubbed those trained in overseas hospitals that had developed, in many cases, advanced techniques in general health care.  That was changing, and fast.  All across the country the medical establishment had taken on a darker hue.  Doctors' names were becoming more and more unpronounceable.  These were the true ambassadors to the New World.  You want your sore throat cured?  Then open your mouth and say 'Allah'.

Perhaps Joe Smith was wiser than Dr. Mataria gave him credit for.  That was the intern's name, so American that even Americans mocked it.  Joe had seen the wind blowing in from the East and was setting his sails accordingly.  His premeds (organic chemistry, biology, physics calculus—at the University of Minnesota, no less) were excellent, GPA beyond average, and he had practically aced his MCAT.  He had been a serious candidate, taken seriously.  In his leather jacket and what seemed to be a World War I vintage aviator hat, he looked like a boy parodying Errol Flynn.  He was not smirking at the foreigners surrounding him.  That was his usual look.

They edged closer to the barrier.  A guard in a well-pressed business suit cautiously waved a wand over a woman in a chador, making certain not to touch her—especially with her husband standing directly behind her.  It appeared the establishment was going out of its way to attend to cultural sensibilities.  Hence the absence of authoritarian uniforms.  Many of these people had fled from police states.  The Commonwealth did not want to give the impression that the immigrants were jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

Mr. Mataria? said Joe.  Medical students did not employ the 'doctor' honorific.

Mmmm...?

There's a sign over there that says 'no cell phones beyond this point'.

I saw it.

Aren't you carrying your cell phone?

I'm a doctor.

Well...I know...but...

A doctor needs to stay in contact with his hospital.

Sure...but—

Everyone understands that.

Joe eyed the guards warily.

You don't understand how the world works, Dr. Mataria continued.

You mean, like interns are slaves even though everyone says slavery is dead?

Exactly.

The woman in the chador was asked to step through the body imager.  The husband fidgeted.  What would those perverts staring at the screen see?  Would she be portrayed naked before the eyes of the infidels?  But this was a perilous moment.  After all the hazards of their journey, the escape to Syria (and then from Syria) and the scrofulous refugee camps...and then receiving almost miraculous sponsorship from an American missionary aid society...to raise a fuss here, on the very doorstep of U.S. citizenship, resulting in ejection from the land of hope and opportunity, would be an act of criminal stupidity.  The husband understood this.  Not being a stupid man, he kept himself on a leash.  This, at least, was Dr. Mataria's assessment of their predicament.  He would have felt the same way as the husband had his own wife been, God willing, standing in this line.

But God had not been willing.  His immediate family was here, in America.  But it was on sufferance.  They had agreed that 'one at a time' was risky enough.  And his own sponsor had turned down the suggestion of citizenship en famille.

His gut soured.  The thought of his sponsor made him ill.

His wife had wanted to attend the ceremony, but was nervous about absenting herself from a job she had been at for only a month.

You must go to your office, Mataria had sadly agreed with her.  As they say in this country, we are now 'on the clock'.

With courteous smiles the guards let the woman pass through.  Her husband sighed deeply.  With another nod the guards summoned him forward.  Ahmed also sighed, in relief.  A cultural flare-up would have delayed things, and they were supposed to be in the courtroom by 10 AM.

But there was a delay.  Joe had foreseen it.

You can't bring that in here, said a guard as Ahmed placed his keys, wallet and cell phone in the plastic tray on the counter.

I'm a doctor, Dr. Ahmed Mataria asserted, brandishing his authority like a whip.

I understand, sir, but for security reasons we cannot allow cell phones into the courthouse.  The guard wore a bland smile full of the promise of repetition.  Demand again, and I'll say the same thing, in the same tone, with the same result.

I need to stay in contact with the hospital.

Joe cringed as his teacher employed the same stentorian voice so feared by his students.  Those reduced to tears by his verbal barrages were unaware that, where he came from, his behavior was considered impractically courteous.

I understand, sir, but for security reasons—

I'm on call! Ahmed cried out, retrieving the phone and holding it aloft like a religious artifact.

Joe was familiar with his teacher's theatrical outbursts.  Among his several girlfriends was a girl from Provence who used the same excited gestures when she spoke, even when she wasn't excited.  He thought it had something to do with Latin blood, although he was never imprudent enough to say so out loud.  Dr. Matarias might be familiar with the Latin roots in Gray's Anatomy, but one would have to backtrack through the double helix pretty far before coming upon anything he might have in common with the French.

Sir...'doctor'...you're holding up the line.

The guards were behaving as well as could be expected.  They were far less aggressive than those he had encountered in Iraq.  And at Heathrow, where airport security had rooted through his nether regions.

If you're looking for a shoe bomb, would I have put it there?

He knew he was taking advantage of them.  They might shoot him if he got out of hand—way out of hand—but, for the moment, none of them showed any inclination to reach for the guns almost certainly holstered under their drab blazers.  But he knew he should behave, that he should obey the rules.  He had met men who knew every trick of the terrorist trade.  Smuggling a bomb into a crowd of innocents was old hat.  All you had to do was smile, really.  Looking stupid helped.  Being stupid cinched it.

I have two patients on the critical list.

Is that so? said the guard standing before the kiosk.

"American patients."

And I hope I have a dedicated doctor like yourself looking after me when my time comes, said the guard.  As dedicated in his profession as Dr. Mataria was in his, he pointed at the raised phone.  But that doesn't come.

Mr. Matarias, I'll be glad to take the phone back to the car, said Joe, cringing as he awaited a wrathful response.

Ahmed was on the verge of telling the guard the lives of his patients were on his head.  But that was self-evident.  If the phone did indeed contain a bomb, or was linked to a car bomb parked outside on Broad Street, much more than the blood of two bypass patients would be on his hands.  The PA standing in for him in the cardiac unit was perfectly competent, and Ahmed was not the only surgeon on call.  He could probably arrange to attend another ceremony months down the road, but the letter from Immigration/Homeland Security carried the tone of a one-shot deal.  He had passed the citizenship and language test at the Norfolk office with flying colors, but it would be for nothing if he did not get his papers today.  Rescheduling, if it was permitted, would only land him with a future set of unattended patients.  And he doubted he could endure another day of the bureaucratic nonsense imposed on non-citizens.  He lowered the phone and handed it to Joe.

Very well...

Thank you, sir, said the guard, lifting his wand and passing it outside Ahmed's jacket.  You won't regret it.

Ahmed grunted.

I'll come back, Joe said.  The parking garage is only two blocks away.  I'll hide the phone under the seat.  Guess I have to leave my camera behind, too.  They don't seem to want that in here, either.

You brought a camera? Ahmed asked.

Sure.  I didn't think you'd mind.  I was thinking we could post a picture of you taking the oath in the newsletter.

Ahmed frowned...and then smiled.  Yes, that would have been a good thing.

With a tinge of sorrow Ahmed watched Joe back through the crowd of waiting immigrants.  As he stepped through the imager he saw Joe wave at him through the broad glass window.  He found the gesture rude, but well-meant.  He nodded.

Once through security he fell in with a confused passel of varying ethnicities.  They all knew they were supposed to appear in a courtroom—but which courtroom?  There was no sign indicating the direction they were supposed to take.  Ahmed assumed it was another test to decide their fitness to be Americans.  Finally, someone (an Eastern European, he decided) had sense enough to return to the kiosk and ask one of the guards where it was they should be going.  Top floor—elevators to the left.

Upstairs, Ahmed found himself immersed in a large vociferous mob crowded into the far side of a wide hall.  He dodged the children zipping back and forth underfoot and pressed close to a wide double door.  A clerk emerged and began waving his hands.

Please back away, he said in a loud stage whisper.  The court is in session.  They can hear you inside.  If you can't lower your voices...  He paused when a boy and his sister bumped against him as they raced after each other.  ...move away.

He disappeared back into the courtroom.

Some of the immigrants moved respectfully into the wide hall.  Others moved in the opposite direction, into the funnel that brought them before the courtroom doors.  The noise did not diminish.  There was no real line, but Ahmed sensed the possibility of losing his place and moved closer.  He was startled to note that there were none of the body smells he had come to expect from such groups.  There was no overt lack of hygiene, no exotic fragrances, no hint of grubby breath or unscrubbed skin.  It was if they had already been subsumed by the great American deodorizer.  They had learned that to become a citizen here, one had to remove the pungent identity of their homeland.  One had to become a neutral object, and smell was the most striking identifier.

Joe need not have worried about missing the ceremony.  Time dragged.  Every fifteen minutes or so the clerk came out to ask them to quiet down.  There were no shouts of complaint, but there were plenty of murmurs, and the accumulation created dark waves of sound.  Many of these people had bottom-rung jobs and were commonly victimized by employers who would not think twice about firing them for taking too long away from the workplace.  Some of them would lose their jobs anyway for the very act of becoming citizens.  Citizens had rights, after all.  They might even ask for a raise.

Perhaps Joe had heard about the delay and was wasting time more meaningfully, perhaps scarfing down a breakfast biscuit and coffee.

An hour passed like thick sludge in a trough.  Behind Ahmed a score of lawyers and clients emerged, their expressions of disappointment suggesting a misspent morning.  There was a hint in the air that the Federal Courthouse was not exactly a place you came to to get things done.

The clerk waved at the crowd and immediately disappeared in the rush of impatient immigrants.  Ahmed threw a brief glance backwards, did not see Joe, and forged through the open door.  The benches in the large courtroom quickly filled.  There was a crush in the center of the room when a woman bearing a clipboard announced applicants were to seat themselves on the left side of the aisle and visitors on the right.  There was some grumbling but also cheerful laughter when several hundred people rubbed and bumped shoulders as they switched over.  There was a great deal of waving as family members and friends signaled their new location across the aisle.  There was still no sign of Joe.  Ahmed was mildly put out.  He had not asked his student to accompany him.  Joe had volunteered, including the use of his car.  Had he grown bored?  Was he using the phone as an excuse to back out of attending?  That was not a very charitable way to treat one's professor.  In fact, if Ahmed chose to take it the wrong way (and he was just the kind of man inclined to do so), Joe might be putting his future career at risk.

There were not enough seats.  People were squeezed against the wall.  Finally, the woman with the clipboard realized a second group of immigrants had joined the first.  The delay had conflated the two groups.  She announced that those scheduled for the 11 AM ceremony would have to return to the lobby and wait.  The grumble level increased.  It was 11:30.

The woman consulted her clipboard and began calling out names.  When she came to Dr. Mataria he raised his hand and shouted, Yes!  I'm here!

The old man seated next to him chuckled.

His feathers ruffled, Ahmed asked him, What's so funny?  Everyone raises their hand when their name is called.

Yes, but you break eardrums.

I didn't do anything wrong.

Oh no no no, I no say that.  The man appeared to be Chinese.  A wizened old creature who had been assisted to his seat by one of his grandsons.

You've chosen to become an American very late in life, Ahmed observed.

I not ready to die yet, the old man shrugged.  Anyway, best to die with family.  China...America...no matter.  So long as there is family.

So he had come here to die.  Ahmed found it a very peculiar notion, what with the vast majority of immigrants having come here to live.

When the woman had finished the roll call she looked at a man strolling up to a podium and shook her head.  100% attendance...again.

The man realized her tone might be inferred as disappointment and quickly interjected, Isn't it wonderful?

Ahmed thought it a marvel that with this many people, from all over a sizable chunk of central Virginia, not one was absent.  The letter from the court had not been so much a summons as a promise to have one's most fervent wish granted.  This was not something you missed out on.

Welcome to you all, said the man at the front of the room.  My name is David Thorne.  I am a Deputy District Attorney for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and it is my wholehearted pleasure to greet you to your new home.

Ahmed, an embittered man who leaned on the cold side, felt...a warm glow.  In part this was caused by practical ambition.  So many positions at the hospital were (legally or, more common, tacitly) closed to him because he was not a citizen.  A whole new world of opportunities was opening up before him.  But there was something else, a deeper sense of belonging.  He had been without a country for too long....

The clerk of the court will call out your names again.  When you hear your name, please stand and give us your name...and, uhm, the correct pronunciation...and tell us where you come from.  Edna...?

Edna raised her clipboard.  Marley Abbasov.

A tough, weather-beaten man stood in the third row.  Marley Abbasov, Azerbaijan.

He sat quickly, as though fearful of exposure.

Jyoti Chotto...pad...hyay...?  Edna made a theatrical show of embarrassment.

A plain woman who seemed to be wearing an assortment of rags stood.  Jyoti Chottopadhyay, Bangladesh.

India...Australia...the Czech Republic...Thailand...Vietnam...and many from the Caribbean and Mexico.  Ahmed, who had worked long, hard years under unbelievably harsh conditions to become a doctor, snobbishly dismissed many of the newcomers.  Future (and present) drudges and house servants of America, they had come here simply to earn the labor of their hands.  It was a bit of an affront to him to be treated with the same deferential familiarity.  Shouldn't there be a separate ceremony for...well, the educated elite?  And yet, overall, he was content with the process.  Even pleased.

His name was called.  He stood.

Dr. Ahmed Marataria...  He paused.  Then, with some pain, he said Egypt.

Suspecting that the old man next to him thought him something of a showoff, he sat quickly.

When the list was finished, the Deputy DA came forward again to administer the oath.  They all stood and raised their right hands.

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen....

No problem there.  Ahmed was renouncing Saddam Hussein and the American Shia puppets who had succeeded him.  Fuck them.  True, it was under Saddam's regime that Ahmed was given the opportunity to go to school.  But it was also Saddam who had brought the Americans down on their heads.  Fuck them twice.

The oath proved quite a mouthful.  The old man next to Ahmed went, Mmmm....mmmm....mmmm...

...I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law...

Ahmed imagined skinny little Jyoti Chottopadhyay taking aim with an M-16.  How was her vision?  Then he tried to imagine himself drawing a bead on an Iraqi insurgent racing across an intersection in Fallujah...or Times Square.  Could he pull the trigger?  The insurgents were his enemies, and the enemies of his enemies.  Tough call.

...I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law, and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, so help me God.

What a joke.  There wasn't a molecule of humanity in that courtroom that did not consider the oath a farcical imposition.  Ahmed found himself trapped between the parenthetical fuck them all and bless them all.  He desired most what he most despised.  America, the incorruptible corruption.

Then came the most essential moment.  Whether you were a strumpet from the Ukraine or a true believer from Poland, the Citizenship Certificate was the gold you walked away with.  Documentary proof of an invisible beneficence.  The days were long gone when you could just look at someone to determine their nationality by their clothing, their language and their affiliations.  Ahmed and everyone else here would be surrendering their Green Card, their once-treasured registration as a legal permanent resident.  Ahmed's card had been sponsored (no doubt with some invisible prodding) by the hospital.  This had imposed a set of obligations upon him that had locked him in place for over a year.  Not that he wasn't grateful for the opportunity to practice in this heaven-sent land of disposable scalpels and ventilators that actually worked—not to mention shrapnel-free patients.  But the leash attached to all human interactions was still there.  Favors were rarely gratis, no matter where in the world you lived.  The difference here was that the establishment claimed freedom was absolute, when everyone and his mother knew that wasn't true at all.

And yet, when he rose and joined the line to receive his certificate, the thrill was irresistible.  This was due in part to the occasional cheers and clapping from the onlookers, oddly decorous (no wild outbursts here), but enough to spice the special moment.  He handed over his Green Card, shook the