18. Loose Ends

In November, Larry MacIver was awarded the Stockholm prize in criminology in recognition of his contributions to the science of criminology and his brave acts that saved the lives of many. MacIver declined the award and did so publicly by doing the rounds of all the talk shows. This was not a good experience for him because he had great difficulty explaining his decision to his interviewers, all of whom thirsted for public adoration and recognition, and did not hide their obvious resentment and scorn of one who rejected the acclamation of his peers. How could he explain to them that he did not need the adoration of his peers to tell him how good he was? That he himself was the only judge of that. It sounded so arrogant.

Unfortunately, the future was not all roses for MacIver. His knees had given out on him, so he could no longer run his five miles a day. His right knee was so painful he had to get around with a walking stick. What with that and the depression he suffered from not being able to run, he turned into an insufferable oaf, becoming more like the obnoxious TV personality

‘House’ every day. To make things worse, in order to fend off his depression he had taken to working in his office and attending all faculty meetings assiduously. He drove his colleagues half-crazy with his outlandish behavior and one rather plain looking female colleague lodged a sexual harassment complaint against him. Around that time, MacIver decided to renew contact with his two kids. His daughter would be in college and his son still in high school. There’s another long story here and quite frankly a pretty boring one. So we will not go there.

Manish Das, the true hero of our story, at MacIver’s urging, turned himself into the University health center to see if anything could be done about his Asperger’s disorder, a disorder that someone at that very same health center had diagnosed. The trouble had been -- at least as far as MacIver could fathom -- that Das was unable to get down to writing his dissertation because his disorder kept him collecting data and tinkering with his gadgetry. So MacIver was a bit miffed when Das returned from the health center all smiles, to report that that they had misdiagnosed his Asperger’s and that in fact he really had ADD or perhaps OCD, or maybe a bit of both. Whatever it was, this seemed to please Das, and he soon settled down to write his dissertation and to defend it that summer. He returned to Mumbai the following fall to marry as arranged, and MacIver, who made a practice of never attending social occasions when invited by his students, made an exception and went to the wedding. It was a lavish affair, the photos taken at the gate of India, the food on one of the days of celebration consumed in the Taj Mahal Hotel. The following year, Manish brought his bride to the United States and took up his new position as assistant professor at Texas Christian University, where he taught criminology in the department of religious studies.

The following year, Mayor Newberg was re-elected to a second term in a very close contest. Although the campaign was down and dirty as any proper New York City campaign should be, this one was particularly nasty because the deputy police commissioner for crime prevention, Askanazy, ran against her. This was unexpected, since all had assumed that her estranged Police Chief Ryan would run. And he was poised to run too, but unfortunately on the day he announced he was running, he choked to death on a piece of ice he swallowed while drinking a 16 ounce soda.

Mayor Newberg used Askanazy’s Russian sounding name against him, reminding New Yorkers that it was Russians who fired the missile at the Freedom Tower, which was now completed. She also cleverly played with the pronunciation of his name, suggesting that it was an appropriate one for a police chief of his overbearing demeanor.

She was also successful in garnering the Islamic vote, even managing to arrange for a mosque to be built, inconspicuously around the corner from the Freedom Tower. Pundits enjoyed insinuating that it was the Islamic vote that tipped the scales in her favor.

Within three months of Mayor Newberg’s re-election, the following legislation was issued by the New York City Council, bowing to her demands: all tea and coffee sold in restaurants and fast food outlets was to be decaffeinated; the caffeine in all sodas was to be replaced by the equivalent amounts of Demerol; sugar was banned in all supermarkets and restaurants; cameras were installed in all restrooms that were open to the public and those not washing their hands after they went were issued a “dirty ticket” as it became known; the smoking of cigarettes was now only permitted on Staten Island. She tried, unsuccessfully, to have subway tokens reintroduced so that her likeness could be etched on both sides, but on this the City Council would not budge. Instead, she had to settle for all Metro Cards used for mass transit to be printed with a touched up photograph of Mayor Newberg on one side and on the obverse a statue of a boy from Brooklyn wearing the Roman cap of Liberty.

Buck Buick was placed on paid leave while a special prosecutor appointed by the Mayor of Newark, who was pretty pissed off at having been left in the dark, investigated the charge of his having used excessive force in killing all the terrorists, including torturing and burning one of them to death. He turned to Mayor Newberg for help in finding a good defense lawyer, but she of course did not respond. Help came from an unexpected source. Fred Lee, Director of the Newark Branch of the FBI was promoted to the position of Director of the FBI national counter terrorism special branch, a position that gave him considerable power. He moved quickly to classify all evidence and documents related to the attack on the Staten Island dump as crucial to national security so the special prosecutor was unable to proceed with the case. During his forced paid leave, Buick started watching movies and came across Hurt Locker. The very next day he re-enlisted in the marines and went back to defusing bombs and killing terrorists.

The local Newark mosque sued the Newark Police Department and the City of Newark for unspecified damages, for false arrest of its constituents, invasion of privacy of its worshippers, and infringement of their First amendment rights. The mayor settled for an undisclosed amount and to pay for it legalized marijuana in the city, allowing only city owned distribution centers to sell it. This business became so successful that the Newark city council passed a resolution to reduce the property tax by 5% a year until the levy was reduced to zero.

Agent Fred Lee’s appointment as director of the FBI Special Counter Terrorism Branch caused Agent Crosby considerable distress. Lee insisted that Crosby move with him to be his assistant in his office that was located at the FBI special training center in Quantico, Virginia. Crosby’s wife was pregnant with their third child and did not want to move. Lee could not see the difficulty. “It’s a simple choice,” he said to Crosby. “You come with me or you stay with your wife.” Crosby stayed with his wife and got a job as the security boss at the local supermarket chain. Lee was very upset with Crosby’s choice, so he made sure that the Honda Fit went with him to Virginia. Crosby did OK though. He got a company car with his new position, a 2001 black Ford Lincoln town car.

Monica Silenzio’s role in orchestrating the rendition of the FBI sting suspects could have come under scrutiny but thanks to Lee’s classification of all the documents as top security, nothing ever came to light. In fact, she went on secret assignment for CIA operations in Beijing where she met her current husband, multi billionaire real estate developer, Li Wan Lei. Silenzio quickly learned how to spend huge amounts of money, tastefully, and became a frequent visitor to Sotheby’s in New York and London. They celebrated their wedding in the stylish Tribecca Tower in Manhattan, just around the corner from Freedom Tower. She invited both Buick and MacIver to the wedding and both showed up, surprising her, but nevertheless she was most flattered that they bothered. Unfortunately, she had only a few moments with them and was whisked away to meet the many other rich and fawning guests. It ended up rather badly for Buick and MacIver who, seeing an open bar with endless drinks and fabulous appetizers, made pigs of themselves while they regaled each other with stories of adventure and bravery. They stayed by the bar and never quite made it into the wedding ceremony. A large security person, dressed to look like a waiter, white jacket, black bow tie and the rest, hovered around them, and when it became apparent that they were unable to stand up without each other’s support, he guided them firmly to the elevator and saw them down to a taxi.

The dental profession lost an outstanding practitioner when Dr. Kumar Jamal decided to retire from the profession and moved to Mumbai to become a Bollywood actor. He had played so many different roles as an ISI double agent, he reasoned, that acting would come naturally to him.

With the considerable stash of money he had reaped from the Newark caper, he still had enough to support him for life and even longer, and perhaps, even to bribe whoever it was necessary to work his way into the Bollywood elite. Maybe even invest in his own movie! So he packed his belongings, sold off his dental practice, and took a train, top first class air conditioned of course, to Mumbai. It was during a brief stop at an out of the way station where one of his informers told him that the Americans had droned Shalah Muhammad. He had heard that the Newark adventure was an incomplete success, and should have been relieved by the news of Muhammad’s demise. But he knew that Iranian bigots would pick up where he left off, and track him down to extract a portion of their revenge, even though he had done everything on his side perfectly. He gave his informer a much bigger tip than usual and chose to ignore, for the time being, the worrying fact that his extremely reliable network of informers was his Achilles heel. The train slowly pulled out of the station and chugged towards its final destination. Kumar reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and retrieved his ticket for the Enoma International Film Festival. He looked forward to sitting back in one of the plush theater seats, ordering samosas, sipping on fresh lemonade.

Halid the Handler took early retirement. He explained to his wife and ten year old that they were in danger of being targeted by a drone, so it would be best to go where the Americans could not find him, which was the United States. His wife, in full compliance, did not ask where they would get the money to make the trip, but she could not help but notice that suddenly they had a lot more money to spend. They packed up all their worldly belongings and shipped them to an address in Nogales, Texas where they arrived some months later after a leisurely trip sightseeing in Greece, Italy and France. The Handler even had a job waiting for him, working as a customs and immigration officer at the border entry to Mexico. His son had much trouble adjusting to his new life, and took to yelling abuse at his father who had to constantly remind him that he had a new name, in fact the whole family had new names.

After his brother Nicholas showed up at his house unannounced, Uncle Sergey gave up the terrorism business and joined him in a lucrative trade selling women from Eastern Europe and the more impoverished parts of Russia, which was most of it. At first they began kidnapping these women, but then quickly found that most of them wanted to migrate to America or various parts of the West, so all they had to do was to arrange their forged documents and travel and charge a heavy price. The ones who couldn’t raise the money, if they still wanted to migrate, Sergey arranged to send off to brothels or to sell them directly to men who were looking for wives. The business was so successful that they planned to expand into China where there was a well-known shortage of women.

The droning of Shalah Muhammad was the true beginning of his misfortunes. It turned out that Heaven was divided into sectors just like Jerusalem and because of a bureaucratic snafu, or perhaps it was Divine Providence, we will never know, Shalah turned up at the gate to the Christian sector. There he was confronted by St. Peter, who sat before the pearly gates, flanked on each side by two huge muscle bound eunuchs, each with their arms crossed. St. Peter shone so brightly that Shalah had to squint to see past him through the bars of the gates. And the more he squinted, the larger the eunuchs grew because St. Peter knew what he was up to, trying to get a glimpse of any virgin that he reckoned was his due.

Most unimpressed by this lasciviousness St. Peter scolded him severely, and, when Shalah argued that he was not a Christian but a Muslim, St. Peter got really mad, checked his ledger, and accused him of being a communist and an atheist. The eunuchs edged forward, the muscles in their arms bulging in anticipation, their huge hands ready to grab him. St. Peter, his long white beard flowing like clouds, his white robes reflecting the glow of the wings of angels, pointed a gnarled finger, its nail uncut for eons, forcing Shalah to cringe at its point. You are sentenced to the deepest circle of hell, said St. Peter–well he didn’t say it, he didn’t have to, because up there everyone knows what everyone else is thinking–and the eunuchs leaped forward, grabbed him by the throat and testicles and threw him down to hell. There, nasty little demons with pointy tails and pitch forks implemented the specifics of the sentence which were that he must, for all eternity, keep his beard beautifully groomed by clipping it with red hot nail scissors. This may not seem like a punishment that was bad enough, except that in this circle of hell, his beard grew at the rate of an earth-month in one day.

If only Sarah Kohmsky, through some amazing miracle, did not really die at the hands of Shalah Muhammad! But she did die that violent death, even though it seemed unfair that she should meet such a horrible end. Is there not a way that she could live on? The mystery of her life will one day be known. In our story there was a gap of some eight years in her life about which we were told very little. Maybe something really did happen that night she got drunk and woke up in Shalah’s bed? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if poor Mr. and Mrs. Kohmsky had a grandchild living somewhere, even if it was in Cairo?

Mr. and Mrs. Kohmsky after repeated requests to the U.S. State Department to investigate the whereabouts of their missing daughter, migrated back to Russia. With the money they had received from Nicholas

— they were convinced that it was he who sent it — they bought a modest but pleasant apartment in Tulgovichi, the town they had left so many years ago. Mr. Kohmsky, in celebration of his change in life circumstance, gave up reading 19th century Russian literature, and began a systematic reading of the Russian authors of the 20th century, including those who had migrated from Russia to other countries. Mrs. Kohmsky saw no reason to change. She just wanted her daughter back. She sent letters to the return address that was on the envelope they were certain came from Nicholas, but the letters were returned, address unknown. There was just one small matter that kept her busy, though, and that added a little adventure to her life. The CIA had recruited her to collect all kinds of information from the local Russian newspapers and to send it to them on a regular basis. For this, money showed up in their account at the Promsvyazbank in Tulgovichi.

Then one day a small, unmarked package appeared at the door of her apartment. It was rather heavy and at first she was a little apprehensive about opening it. She consulted with Mr. Kohmsky who lifted it slowly up and down and pronounced it safe. So she opened it and found a small burial urn. Inside the urn were ashes, or more accurately a substance that looked like a mixture of sand, small bits of rock, and ashes of some kind.

She knew that it was Sarah.

In spite of political wrangling within Israel and condemnation by the United Nations, the fences in Israel and the Palestinian territories continued to be built and thwarted many suicide bombings every year.

Unfortunately an astute politician noticed that some of his neighbors were sporting chicken coops that were far more elegant than the chickens they contained. He happened to joke about this during an interview with a journalist for Haaretz who instantly smelled corruption. Upon investigation he exposed an extensive network in stolen fencing wire that looked suspiciously like that used in the fences erected in the Palestinian territories. The government defended its actions by pointing to the fact that there were a number of Palestinian houses that also had similar chicken coops, which proved that, contrary to the naysayers, Israel and Palestine were able to achieve much when working together.

THE END