And yet Apara froze, motionless, not daring to breathe, until the two men—smelling of cigarettes and after-shave lotion—passed her and were well down the corridor. They were talking about the war, betting that it would be launched before the week was out.
Her stealth suit’s surface was honeycombed with microscopic fiber-optic vidcams and pixels that were only a couple of molecules thick. The suit hugged Apara’s lithe body like a famished lover. Directed by the computer built into her helmet, the vidcams scanned her surroundings and projected the imagery onto the pixels.
It was the closest thing to true invisibility that the Cabal’s technology had been able to come up with. So close that, except for the slight unavoidable glitter when the sequin like pixels caught some stray light, Apara literally disappeared into the background.
Covering her from head to toe, the suit’s thermal absorption layer kept her infrared profile vanishingly low and its insulation subs king held back the minuscule electromagnetic fields it generated. The only way they could detect her would be if she stepped into a scanning beam, but the wide spectrum goggles she wore should reveal them to her in plenty of time to avoid them.
She hoped.
Getting into the president’s mansion had been ridiculously easy. As instructed, she had waited until dark before leaving the Cabal’s safe house in the miserable slums of the city. Her teammates drove her as close to the presidential mansion as they dared in a dilapidated, nondescript faded blue sedan that would draw no attention. They wished her success as she slipped out of the car, invisible in her stealth suit.
“For the Cause,” Ahmed said, almost fiercely, to the empty air where he thought she was.
“For the Cause,” Apara repeated, knowing that she might never see him again.
Tingling with apprehension, Apara hurried across the park that fronted the mansion, unseen by the evening strollers and beggars, then climbed onto the trunk of one of the endless stream of limousines that entered the grounds. She passed the perimeter guard posts unnoticed.
She rode on the limo all the way to the mansion’s main entrance. While a pair of bemedaled generals got out of the limousine and walked crisply past the saluting uniformed guards, Apara melted back into the shadows, away from the lights of the entrance, and took stock of the situation.
The guards at the big, open double doors wore splendid uniforms and shouldered assault rifles. And were accompanied by dogs: two big German shepherds who sat on their haunches, tongues lolling, ears laid back.
Will they smell me if I try to go through the doors? Apara asked herself. Muldoon and his technicians claimed that the insulated stealth suit protected her even from giving off a scent. They were telling the truth, as they knew it, of course. But were they right?
If she were caught, she knew her life would be over. She would simply disappear, a prisoner of their security apparatus. They would use drugs to drain her of every scrap of information she possessed. They would not have to kill her afterward; her mind would be gone by then.
Standing in the shadows, invisible yet frightened, she tongued the cyanide capsule lodged between her upper-right wisdom tooth and cheek. This is a volunteer mission, Muldoon had told her. You’ve got to be willing to give your life for the Cause.
Apara was willing, yet the fear still rose in her throat, hot and burning.
Born in the slums of Beirut to a mother who abandoned her and a father she never knew, she had understood from childhood that her life was worthless. Even the name they had given her, Apara, meant literally “born to die.”
It was during her teen years, when she had traded her body for life itself, for food and protection against the marauding street gangs who raped and murdered for the thrill of it, that she began to realize that life was pointless, existence was pain, the sooner death took her the sooner she would be safe from all fear.
Then Ahmed entered her life and showed her that there was more to living than waiting for death. Strike back! he told her. If you must give up your life, give it for something worthwhile. Even we who are lost and miserable can accomplish something with our lives. We can change the world!
Ahmed introduced her to the Cabal, and the Cabal became her family, her teacher, her purpose for breathing.
For the first time in her short life, Apara felt worthwhile. The Cabal flew her across the ocean, to the United States of America, where she met the pink-faced Irishman who called himself Muldoon and was entrusted with her mission to the White House. And decked in the stealth suit, a cloak of invisibility, just like the magic of old Baghdad in the time of Scheherazade and the Thousand and One Nights.
You can do it, she told herself as she clung to the shadows outside the White House’s main entrance. They are all counting on you: Muldoon and his technicians and Ahmed, with his soulful eyes and tender dear hands.
When the next limousine disgorged its passengers, a trio of admirals, Apara sucked in a deep breath and walked in with them, past the guards and the dogs. One of the animals perked up its ears and whined softly as she marched in step behind the admirals, but other than that heart-stopping instant she had no trouble getting inside the White House. The guard shushed the animal, gruffly.
She followed the trio of admirals out to the west wing, and down the stairs to the basement level and a long, narrow corridor. At its end, Apara could see, was a security checkpoint with a metal detector like the kind used at airports, staffed by two women in uniform. Both of them were African Americans.
She stopped and faded back against the wall as the admirals stepped through the metal detector, one by one. The guards were lax, expecting no trouble. After all, only the president’s highest and most trusted advisors were allowed here.
Then the two plainclothes guards walked past her, openly displaying their machine pistols and talking about the impending war.
“You think they’re really gonna do it?”
“Don’t see why not. Hit ‘em before they start some real trouble. Don’t wait for the mess to get worse.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
They walked down the corridor as far as the checkpoint, chatted briefly with the female guards, then came back, passing Apara again, still talking about the possibility of war.
Apara knew that she could not get through the metal detector without setting off its alarm. The archway like device was sensitive not only to metals, but sniffed for explosives and x-rayed each person stepping through it. She was invisible to human eyes, but the x-ray camera would see her clearly.
She waited, hardly breathing, until the next clutch of visitors arrived. Civilians, this time. Steeling herself, Apara followed them up to the checkpoint and waited as they stopped at the detector and handed their wristwatches, coins and belts to the women on duty, then stepped through the detector, single file.
Timing was important. As the last of the civilians started through, holding his briefcase in front of his chest, as instructed, Apara dropped flat on her stomach and slithered across the archway like a snake speeding after its prey. Carefully avoiding the man’s feet, she got through the detector just before he did.
The x-rays did not reach the floor, she had been told. She hoped it was true.
The alarm buzzer sounded. Apara, on the farside of the detector now, sprang to her feet.
“Hold it, sir,” said one of the uniformed guards. “The metal detector went off.”
He looked annoyed. “I gave you everything. Don’t tell me the damned machine picked up the hinges on my briefcase.”
The woman shrugged. “Would you mind stepping through again, sir, please?”
With a huff, the man ducked back through the doorway, still clutching his briefcase, and then stepped through once more. No alarm.
“Satisfied?” he sneered.
“Yes, sir. Thank you,” the guard said tonelessly.
