The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (Part 39)

CHAPTER 39:

KNOCK de KNOCK-KNOCK

When Piffy was a kid he played sandlot football. He was always one of the quarterbacks. He would get his team in a huddle and draw a line in the sand. “You go long,” he would tell Spud. Then he would draw a second line showing Spud where he was to go. Sometimes the lines intersected, sometimes they didn’t. Football was a complicated game. The plays never worked—somebody would fumble the ball or fall down or Darla would walk by and Piffy would forget where he was in the count.

His plans to sneak Aisha out of the Osama bin Laden Madrassas for Girls were no less fanciful than his preteen attempts to imitate the genius of Vince Lombardi in the empty lot near the hardware store. He would slip into the Madrassas as a ten-year-old boy, that’s what he would do—it would be the perfect disguise; he would locate Aisha, rig her up to look like Opie Taylor, and then sneak her past the guards and hide her in his room at the hotel until he could figure out some way to get her across the border. It would be Spud going long.

“And you expect to accomplish all this as a ten-year-old boy?” asked Ka’b.

“There are one or two things I haven’t worked out yet,” said Piffy.

“Before you do anything rash,” said Ka’b, “I want you to call Abu Afaq. Tell him you need his best agent. That will be Wheatley W. Wheatley. Explain what you intend to do and what you will need. If Afaq and Wheatley think it can be done, I will not only turn you into a ten-year-old boy, I will make a house call.”

“A house call?” said Piffy.

“Yes, I will perform the transformation in the privacy of your hotel room,” said Ka’b.

“You don’t need to go to all that trouble,” said Piffy.

“Believe me,” said Ka’b, “it will be no trouble. These transformations are not something I like to perform in a public thoroughfare. This is Gaza City not the Pigalle. Such things are frowned upon here.”

“I imagine they are,” said Piffy. He wasn’t sure he knew what Ka’b was talking about but it would be best if he left the matter to the man who would perform the transformation.

The old man gazed down the street. It was getting late. He shook his head wearily. “Would you mind telling me why it is necessary for you to get into the Madrassas as a ten-year-old boy?” he asked.”

“Because it’s the only way Aisha will recognize me,” said Piffy.

“Really?” said Ka’b.

“We were ten years old and we were in love,” said Piffy.

“My Goodness!” said Ka’b. “Ten years old and in love! Do such things still happen?”

“Fate threw us together,” said Piffy. “We met in a McDonalds. We’ve been through more hell together than Bonnie and Clyde. She saved from being beat up by a gang of Asian kids. I’ve worn her underwear…”

“I was hoping you would spare me the details,” said Ka’b.

“Oh, good grief!” said Piffy. “It wasn’t anything sexual! We were ten-years-old!”

Ka’b sighed. “Yes, I suppose you were.” He glanced down the street again. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have an appointment with my chiropractor.”

“A chiropractor? You?” said Piffy.

“I am 1,400 years old,” said Ka’b. “The years have made inroads on my health.”

Without further ado the old man pulled himself up into his umbrella and when he had almost disappeared, he reached back with one hand and dragged the umbrella after him to wherever it was he was going—to the netherworld, to where the woodbine twineth, to where the jinns and the leprechauns played and never was heard a discouraging word, not from the Qur’an, not from Mein Kampf, not from al-Qaeda or Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad. All he had to do was stay away from Maslama and strong perfumes…

Piffy went back to the hotel. He fed puppy dog and called Abu Afaq. He got through immediately.

The voice on the other end of the line was kind, considerate and avuncular. Whether or not it was Abu Afaq he would never know. He explained exactly what he intended to do and what he would need—fake passports, assorted IDs, hotel reservations, clothes for a couple of ten-year-old kids.

Abu Afaq—if that’s who it was—clucked his tongue. “It’s been a long time since we’ve tried something this crazy,” he said. “Did bint Marwan put you up to this?”

Piffy said no.

“I will send Wheatley W. Wheatley,” said Abu Afaq.

“When can I expect this Wheatley?” asked Piffy.

“Any minute now,” said Abu Afaq

And with that—whoever it was—hung up. Piffy called back immediately, there were a few things he had wanted to ask but an automated voice told him he had dialed an inoperative number. He checked the phonebook—Abu Afaq’s number had disappeared! He groaned. He had been down this road before.

It reminded him of the night in the pole dancer’s apartment when Algernon’s number had appeared and then disappeared from the phone book. He was sure neither Philip Marlowe nor Sam Spade would have had the stomach for this kind of work.

He had nothing to do but wait for Wheatley W. Wheatley. Abu Afaq had said the agent would be there any minute. Sure. He turned on the TV. He had scarcely sat down when a tapping commenced upon his door—a most unusual tapping.

“KNOCK de KNOCK- KNOCK!”

Knock-de-knock-knock? What the hell was this—Dragnet? Good grief!

Puppy dog let out an angry growl.

The tapping came again, more insistent than before. It sounded angry.

“KNOCK de KNOCK- KNOCK!”

Piffy opened the door. It wasn’t Joe Friday—or Saturday or Sunday or Monday or any other day of the week he had ever heard of. It was something entirely different.

“Hi, I’m Wheatley W. Wheatley,” she said. “I’m Algernon A. Algernon’s cousin. Maybe you have heard of him.”

Indeed Piffy had. If she had been blessed with less eye shadow and a significantly less voluptuous arrangement of body fat he would have mistaken her for Algernon A. Algernon—right down to the black slouch hat, the whip and the high-button shoes.

“I hear you got a problem, kid,” she said.

Kid? He didn’t like that a one bit. He wasn’t a kid. He was Bernard Piffy, as good a private detective as had ever harassed the bad guys through the mean streets of Mike Hammerville.

“Are you sure Dogpatch can get along without you?” he asked.

Wheatley glanced round the apartment. She spied puppy dog. “Nice mutt you got there, kid,” she said. “Does she fetch?”

Puppy dog growled. There were some folks the mutt just didn’t like at first sight.

“I don’t think you’re right for this job,” said Piffy.

“You don’t, ‘ey?” she said. She uncoiled her whip, shook it out and laid about the apartment like Lash LaRue snapping guns from the hands of the bad hombres in the second half of a double feature at the Bijou. It was an impressive performance except for the lacerated lampshade and the Venetian blind that took fright and went into hiding at the top of the window.

Piffy grimaced. “It must run in the family,” he mumbled.

Wheatley coiled the whip. “It’s made out of one-hundred-percent genuine mujahideen pizzles,” she said proudly.

“No doubt,” said Piffy. He pulled down the blinds, turned the lampshade so the gash faced the wall. Why did he always get the nuts? He wasn’t Maxwell Smart; he didn’t advertise in the Yellow Pages.

“So you want to sneak into the Osama bin Laden Madrassas for Girls,” she said. “Well, at least you think big.”

“Look—“ said Piffy, “I’m beginning to have second thoughts about this thing. I don’t know if I want to go through with it or not.” At least not with Wheatley W. Wheatley he didn’t. He was sorry he had called Abu Afaq. He should have known better.

“You haven’t seen my plans yet, kid,” said Wheatley. She reached inside her ample bosom, took out a thick sheaf of papers and laid them on a table. “Come on, take a look,” she urged.

Piffy went over to the table, peered over her shoulder at the papers. He hadn’t known what to expect but he was impressed—really impressed! There were scale drawings of every room in the Madrassas from the kitchen to the Imam’s cloakroom. There was an overlay map with dotted lines that led from the proposed ingress to the proposed egress. And that was only the beginning.

The surveillance cameras were all numbered and the dead spaces in the courtyard were recorded with an exactitude that was simply amazing. Somebody, Wheatley or Abu Afaq, had turned this simple little operation into Mission Impossible! There was a contour map—a honest-to-goodness contour map! The north half of the kitchen was one inch higher than the southern half! One inch—who would have thought!

It was obvious Wheatley was not Algernon A. Algernon. She might look like her sawed-off cousin—she was actually a half-inch shorter than Algernon and was certainly more pulchritudinous, if in a bizarre sort of way—but she was all business! He could deal with someone like her without having to worry about losing his pants before he got to first base.

“What do you say, kid?” she said.

Piffy grinned. “Okay,” he said. “It’s a deal.”

“Good,” she said. “Have you got a way to get in?”

”Yeah,” he said. “Ka’b is going to turn me into a ten-year-old boy and I’m going to buy a stack of Rachel Corrie postcards and go through the Madrassas selling them.”

“Rachel Corrie postcards?” said Wheatley. She was skeptical. “Are you kidding?”

“Not such a good idea?” he asked.

“I’ll say not!” she said. “The Rachel Corrie craze is over. You won’t make a dime! Besides—they would never let you into that hoity-toity Madrassas for something that silly. You’ve got to think big.”

“How about if I sell copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?” he said. “That’s big.”

“No, no, no,” she said. “The last kid that tried that was sent to Afghanistan to harvest poppies for the Taliban. What you need is a real plan—an Abu Afaq plan.”

”You have one?” asked Piffy. He realized he was taking a chance—he would be going long on the receiving end of somebody else’s pass.

“I sure do,” she said. “Here’s what we do. We rent a donkey. We get two fifty-gallon jars; we fill one with cooking oil, you climb in the other one and we deliver you to the Madrassas cook shack. It’ll be dark and while the driver engages the night cook in conversation, you slip out of the jar and disperse into the Madrassas. A classic infiltration tactic! Beautiful…right? After that, you’re on your own. We got a man who handles this kind of stuff for us. His name is Duldul. I’ll give him a call.”

Piffy was dumbfounded. Of all the hair-brained schemes! ”That’s out of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves!” he said. “It will never work!”

“It will too!” said Wheatley.

“It will not!” said Piffy. He was getting angry.

“It worked for Ali Baba!” she said.

“Did not!” he said.

“Did too!” she said. They were beginning to sound like Joanie and Chachi.

“It did not!” said Piffy. “It worked for the thieves!”

“The principle is the same!” shouted Wheatley. Her face had turned purple under its normal pallor and she was breathing heavily, almost gasping.

“This is ridiculous!” shouted Piffy. “You’re worse than Algernon!”

“Yeah?” said Wheatley. “Well, you’re worse than…worse than…” She couldn’t find the words she wanted and in the event it didn’t matter.

A loud fizzing sound had suddenly filled the room! It could have been anything from air escaping a barrage balloon to a giant Alka Seltzer exploding in a glass of swamp water. Or it could have been a cyanide capsule dropping into a pan of sulfuric acid! Whatever it was, it scared the living hell out of them!

Piffy hit the deck and Wheatley dove behind a table. There was a muffled clap of thunder and a cloud of pungent smoke boiled up from the floor in front of the door! The cloud dissipated almost immediately but the smell remained.

Piffy got up. A man had appeared in what was left of the cloud. He was crouching in front of the door like an ugly little toad caught in the King’s polliwog pond without a fishing license. He had an umbrella in one hand and a look of dismay on his face.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ said Piffy.

Wheatley came out from behind the table. She uncoiled her whip and went at the little man as if she were Indian Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark with Spanky and Alfalfa screaming in the peewee gallery.

”Stop!” cried the little man. “Stop! It’s me—Ka’b!”