Perspectives, An Intriguing Tale of an American Born Terrorist (26 page)

“What are you going to do with the guns?”

“Protect you and Carly from the bad guys.”

There was a knock on their door. Mary opened it slightly and was greeted by a fairly nice tobacco stained smile. Jonathan slammed the suitcase shut and then nodded, giving her permission to open the door the rest of the way.

The homeless man blurted out, “I don’t know how to say this, but thank you ma’am and sir and little girl.”

Jonathan answered. “No problem. Now, we just have a few more things that we need to do and then we’ll be out to see you. Help yourself to the mini-bar but don’t fall asleep, understand?”

“I was just thinking that I never introduced myself,” said the street person as he dried his hair with a big fluffy white towel. “I’m Andrew Dockery.”

“Andrew, I’m Jonathan Anderson and this is my wife Mary.”

Andrew looked quite comfortable in his $200 Marriot robe.

“Andrew, I need you to shave and then I’m going to make a caste of your face.” He fumbled through his luggage and handed Andrew his toiletry kit.

“Why do you want to do that?”

“Because for the next few days you’re going to be me, and I’m going to be you.”

Andrew looked confused. He scratched his head and said, “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Jonathan ignored his comment. “I just have a few things I need to do to you. After we make the caste, I’m going to give you a haircut and put some color in your hair and put a little make-up on your face.”

“This is starting to give me the creeps,” answered Andrew.

“There’s nothing to worry about, really,” said Mary. “Have a few drinks and we’ll be out in a minute.” After Andrew disappeared, she asked, “Is there?”

“Is there, what?” answered Jonathan.

“Is there anything to be afraid of?”

“There’s everything to be afraid of.”

Mary was amazed as she watched Jonathan work through the night, making latex masks of the two men’s faces and watching them slowly morph into the other. Jonathan gave Andrew a haircut that was identical to his and then colored his hair, so that it was about the same shade.

“If I had known you could do hair like that, I would’ve had you do my hair,” laughed Mary.

Jonathan smiled when he was through. “Oh one more gift, wear these.” Jonathan tossed his $250 pair of Oaklies to Andrew. He fumbled for them and put them on. He got up and walked over to a mirror.

“You’re looking pretty sharp,” said Mary.

Andrew smiled.

“What about me?” asked Mary. “Are you going to change the way I look?”

“You’re next, sit down.”

“You’re not going to cut my hair, are you?”

“You said you wanted to come along. There’s still time to back out.”

“Okay, but nothing too dramatic.”

“Trust me.”

Mary rolled her eyes at him.

Jonathan hacked at her hair until it was the length of a short male haircut. She gasped as the long locks hit the floor. He then changed the color from reddish gray to blonde, including her eyebrows. When she looked in the mirror, she was amazed at the transformation that a simple hair job could do.

“I’m just wondering whether I need to give you a tattoo and a nose spike,” said Jonathan.

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?” she replied.

Jonathan was still studying her.

“Please no, at least nothing permanent.”

“We’ll get back to that. Now Andrew, I’ve left an imprint of my charge card with the front desk and you charge whatever you like to this room. You can eat at the restaurant, shop in the stores and drink at the bars. And here’s the card if you go outside. Remember for the next 7 days, you’re Jonathan Anderson. The longer you keep it a secret, the longer you can stay. In 7 days, I’m going to cancel this card, so you will need to leave. Do you have all that?”

Andrew let out a big yawn and nodded. “I’m real tired, I think I’ll go to bed now.” He felt his face,“Is this stuff going to come off in the night?”

“Not a chance,” answered Jonathan.

Once Andrew was asleep, Jonathan whispered to Mary. Don’t get too sleepy because we have a couple more things to do before morning.”

“What are we going to do about Carly?”

“You’ll have to wake her up.”

“How are you going to disguise a little girl?”

“You’ll see. We need some passport pictures.”

“Where are we going to get pictures at this hour?”

“Walmart, Kinkos, Walgreens, that’s your job. Find someplace open while I work on Carly.”

“National Airport, I mean Reagan Airport or whatever the hell they’re calling it now,” said Jonathan forcefully to the cabbie.

The young Middle Eastern driver nodded indicating that he understood perfectly. The 6 a.m. traffic was already beginning to bustle, but moved quickly and they arrived at the airport at 6:22.

Jonathan scanned the departures board and saw that they had plenty of time to catch the 7:45 Delta flight he had reserved on-line that would take them first to Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport. He handed Mary her and Carly’s new passports, a new driver’s license and 2 credit cards, an American Express Platinum and a Mastercard. He had scribbled a 5 digit zip code and taped it to the back of the AMEX card. “Sometimes they ask for a zip code when you use these cards. Memorize it and then throw away the tape.”

At 1 o’clock in the morning they had found a 24 hour Walgreen’s with a photo lab that was able to take their passport pictures. In two of the four pictures Carly’s eyes were completely closed. In the other 2 they were only half open.

Jonathan expertly inserted and sealed the pictures into 3 passports taken from the stack he had in his case. He also replaced the pictures in two new licenses and matched their new names with the names on the credit cards.

Carly was happy with her new look. Her hair was short and black with a thick part on the side and greased down with mousse. She was wearing blue jeans and tennis shoes and a western shirt. She looked like a little cowboy.

“I always wanted to be a cowboy,” she said when she looked into the mirror.

“And you’re a fine looking one at that.”

“Daddy, can we make Bruiser a sheriff?”

“Sure, sweetie, Bruiser can keep all of us straight.”

“But he’ll need a gun and a badge. Can we get him a gun and a badge?”

“When we get to where we’re going, we’ll get him a gun and a badge.”

Carly smiled.

“Isn’t this identity theft?” asked Mary.

Jonathan scoffed, “Technically yes, but none of these people really exist, so I don’t think that anyone will press charges. I created them several years ago.”

“Why.”

“Because, it’s common practice at the agency to create new identities, so I just used the same technique to create some people no one knows anything about. I thought that one day they might come in handy.”

“You had that right,” returned Mary. “But couldn’t you find me a better name than Dorothy? I don’t think anyone has named their kid that in 60 years.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t put a streak of blue in your hair and pierce your nose.”

“Very funny.”

“Now Carly, remember if anyone asks, what’s your name?”

She smiled and started walking bow legged and then said in her deepest voice, “Johnnie.”

“When can we take Bruiser out of the suitcase? I miss him.”

“Bruiser is taking a nap and he’s fine,” Jonathan partially unzipped his travel bag to expose a spot of Bruiser’s fur. Carly stuck her little finger inside and gave him a rub and then smiled.

Mary was still pouting about her new name. “Can you at least give me a nick name?”

“How about Dottie?”

Mary slugged him in the shoulder.

“What about the briefcase? What are you going to do with that? I don’t think that’s going to make it through security.”

“Why? There’s nothing in it but a bunch of paper.”

“What about the guns and all those passports?”

“Quiet, this is an airport for Christ’s sake!”

“Jonathan, what did you do with them?”

“Ankles, they’re around my ankles. And the passports are inside Bruiser.”

“But won’t the guns set off the alarm?”

“No, sweetie, latest CIA issue, they are Glock 7’s, made of plastic and so is the ammunition.”

The National Airport crowd swallowed them into a sea of anonymity and they had no difficulty receiving their boarding passes in the names of Malcolm, Dorothy and John Kohn. Jonathan snickered to himself knowing that their full fare first-class seats had kicked some freeloading platinum medallion members into the back of the bus. Jonathan bought round trip tickets to Los Angeles, even though he knew they wouldn’t use anything other than the first leg.

“One way tickets nearly always get additional screening and the last thing we want is any more attention,” he explained. “They’ve got cameras all over this place and even if they didn’t recognize us at first, they may eventually because they’re looking for a man, woman and child and they know I can do this stuff.”

“Why do you keep looking around?” asked Mary.

“Because the bastards are out there, I can feel them. I just know that they’re here somewhere; they’re pretty damned good! Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to pick out one of them.”

“They’re probably still chasing that cab,” chuckled Mary.

“We can only hope.”

“Wouldn’t it be scary if we found out that half the state of Virginia worked for the agency,” said Mary.

“It may not be that far from the truth,” returned Jonathan. “I certainly don’t know all the players on my side.”

“Nor do I,” mumbled Mary.

“What?”

“Oh nothing…..just thinking of all the radicals at the university.

They had breakfast at a small cafe and waited until around 7.15 a.m. to wander over to their gate. Their Delta jet would make one stop in Atlanta but they would get off and then they would buy another round trip ticket and catch a flight that would fly them somewhere else. He hadn’t decided whether he needed to stay in Atlanta for a couple of days before moving on, because he had more preparation to do before he could launch his counter-offensive. Mary stretched out in the comfort of her big blue leather seat in the first class cabin of the Boeing 757 and fell into a restless sleep filled with terrorists, death and torture. Carly sat beside Jonathan also sleeping. Jonathan scanned the plane for U.S. Marshalls and picked out a likely candidate in first class and another in coach. Mary was startled awake by turbulence about 10 minutes into the flight. She opened her eyes and saw Jonathan on the other side of the aisle making notes and lists on a yellow legal pad. When she saw that he was awake, she reached across and rubbed his arm. Jonathan smiled at the bit of affection. He picked Carly up from her window seat and put her on his lap and motioned her to come and sit next to him. Carly awoke, found security in her daddy’s lap and fell instantly back asleep.

Mary looked at him teary-eyed, “Do you think we’ll see Matthew again? I miss him so much. I was always there for him. He spoke his first words to me and when I was home he always wanted to be by me.”

Jonathan put his hand on her knee, “He was a real mommy’s boy, that’s for sure,” he said. “I could hardly get him to give me the time of day when you were around. Thank God I had Carly, I would have gotten a complex.”

“But it works the other way with Carly and now….I don’t know what’s gotten into her, but sometimes she’s just plain ugly to me.”

“Give her time,” answered Jonathan. “Kids have a funny way of assessing blame.”

“Do you think we’ll ever see him again, I mean in heaven or wherever we all go.”

“I don’t know. I try not to think about it,” answered Jonathan. “I miss him terribly.”

“I haven’t been able to sleep since we lost him,” continued Mary. “He’s always there, reaching out to me. Most of the time, you know, in my dreams he’s just as he was, playing with Carly. But sometimes he’s suffering and crying out to me and I can’t help him. He’s always just beyond my reach so I have to watch and feel him die over and over again. The dreams are so real. His voice sounds just the same; often I wake with it still ringing in my ears. They took him away from us,” she started to sob. “How could God let this happen?”

Jonathan grimaced, his face red with rage. “He’s gone Mary. You’re right they took him and we’ll never be able to get him back. I try not to sleep, because he keeps coming back to me, too. It’s as if he can’t rest, until we somehow avenge his death.”

“We have to find them,” said Mary. “Take something from them like they’ve taken from us.”

“Try to get some rest, honey. We’ll find them.”

“You know something else,” said Mary. “My greatest fear is that one day you and Carly will see him again and I won’t be there.”

“What are you talking about, we’ll all be there together.”

“Have you ever felt damned?” asked Mary.

“Since July 15th all the time,” returned Jonathan.

“You know the word damned is an interesting word, because encompassed in that one word is everything we fear the most: rejection, isolation, betrayal, treason, murder, shame, humiliation and in that one word there is only darkness. When a person passes into the land of the damned, I don’t think they can ever get out.”

“I know the feeling, but we can’t get sucked into it. Mary, you need to pull yourself together. We have to fight it. Getting depressed is not going to help us now, neither is it going to bring him back. We have too much to do. And besides right now we’re the victims here.”

“Jonathan, I’ve done some really bad things.”

“Hey, snap out of it. This was not your fault; there was nothing you could have done to prevent this. This whole thing is much bigger than you and me. I miss Matthew, too, and I’m plagued with guilt, but we need to use it to drive us and not crush us.”

Mary grabbed hold of his hand, “I said some awful things to you at the hospital and I wasn’t there for you. I’m so sorry that I was so cruel. I know you wouldn’t have done anything intentional to hurt them.”

“A lot of what you said about me was true. I should have been smart enough to realize that we were a target. I guess, with so many other targets for them to hit, I thought ours wouldn’t even be on their list. And I should have trusted you. But agency policy is so strict that I couldn’t tell you. That’s why I said that half the people in Virginia are probably agents and we’ll never know it.”