"I am just pointing out a known fact. Jews do not eat shellfish. You do not eat shellfish. There may possibly be a connection. I do not know. I cannot say. I am just saying it."
"Say it to yourself," said Yusef. "I am wondering something else."
"And what is this you are wondering?"
"Why if we are to pilot a missile called the Fist of Allah into Paradise, Sargon is making us practice by driving a mere bus. A bus rides on wheels. A missile streaks through the air like an arrow."
"There is a good reason, never fear."
"I know there is a good reason. What I am wondering is what this reason is."
"I am wondering this same thing, too," Jihad Jones said as he pulled into the seafood restaurant in exotic Ohiostan.
Yusef took the cell phone with him because Sargon the Persian had insisted he carry it at all times in case they were to be summoned.
After they entered the restaurant, a convoy of official FBI cars and Light Armored Vehicles raced along the Ohio Turnpike in the direction of the Al-Bahlawan Mosque.
But neither man saw this.
Tamayo Tanaka wasn't going to take it lying down.
She was supposed to be the story. Now Abeer Ghula was the story. If Tamayo Tanaka wasn't going to be the story, then she had to get next to the story.
And that meant getting next to Abeer Ghula, distasteful as it was.
Not that it was going to be easy.
Everyone wanted to get next to Abeer Ghula. Especially after it was reported an attempt had been made on her life. The First Lady herself had denounced the attempt and thrown the awesome weight of her political power behind Abeer Ghula. That made it the lead story of the day. And Tamayo Tanaka had to own that story.
So she called her news director up in Boston from her Washington hotel.
"Check it out, Tammy. Still got your hidden camera?"
"It's my pillow at night, you know that."
"After last night, your face will be recognizable all over Manhattan."
"Don't worry. I'll wear a fright wig and dark glasses."
"Try to blend in with the other Asian reporters.
There must be a tidal wave of them down there by now."
"Got it covered," said Tamayo Tanaka, blow- drying her pert blond coif. No one was going to recognize her in her undercover disguise. No one at all.
Except maybe her mother.
the body when the Yellow Checker cab dropped Tamayo off at the corner of Broadway and West Forty-fifth Street ninety minutes later. A sheet shrouded the gunman, but as they bumped him into the back of the waiting ambulance, an arm flopped out. Literally flopped. It was as thin and boneless as a noodle. But it was covered in fabric that, while stained burgundy, showed clean patches of USPS blue gray.
With her hidden camera, Tamayo Tanaka captured it all.
Then, breezing past the stony-faced FBI agents once she gave them her hotel confirmation number, she took a glass elevator to the upstairs reception area.
It was a joke. The FBI had the place guarded against mailmen and famous-faced journalists, but it was still a public building and one of the best hotels in the city.
No one could stop a guest from checking in.
"I want a room as far above Abeer Ghula's as possible," she told the reception clerk, "unless she's on a lower floor, in which case give me one beneath her in case I have to evacuate for a bomb threat. I don't trust these glass elevators. They make me nervous."
"Will the third floor do?"
"It'll do perfectly," Tamayo Tanaka said, suppressing a grin. That narrowed the floors down.
At her room door, the bellboy accepted a twenty- dollar bill in return for revealing the floor where Abeer Ghula was holed up.
"I don't know the room number," he said.
"Not necessary," Tamayo said. "I don't suppose I could talk you out of that uniform?"
"I'm not allowed to fraternize with the guests."
"Bend a rule for a blonde with a problem."
"Man, this never happens to me," the bellboy said, shucking off his uniform tunic and stripping down his
"Change in the bathroom and toss your duds out as you go," Tamayo told him.
The bellboy shrugged. "It's your party."
When he was done, the bellboy was chagrined to see the blonde was buttoning his tunic over her pink silk bra.
"Is this a TV kind of deal?" he asked.
"I'm not on TV."
"I mean transvestite TV. Because if it is, I'll wear whatever I have to if it makes you horny—I mean happy."
Zipping up her fly, Tamayo threw open the room door.
"Where are you going?" the bellboy called after her.
"I'll be back as soon as I can. Sit tight."