McKean S04 The Re-Election Plot Read Free Page A

exchanged surprised glances and then McKean said, “Send her up.”
    Minutes later, Fatima Yamani sat in one of McKean’s guest chairs while I sat in the other, which left little spare room in McKean’s small, cluttered office. With McKean seated at his manuscript-strewn desk, we were all knee-to-knee. Mrs. Yamani had arrived dressed in a black robe with a brown scarf wrapped around her head and drawn across her face below her eyes. Now, she removed the scarf to reveal a pretty Arabian face.
    “I don’t wear veil, normally,” she said in labored, heavily accented English. “I am Americanized woman. I have no love for extremist or terrorist. But I think I might be watched, so I wore veil to hide my face.”
    Looking at McKean imploringly she pleaded, “You are a great helper of people who are in trouble, is that not true?”
    “I try to do what I can,” McKean replied with uncharacteristic modesty.
    She continued in a rush. “Are you not the scientist who cured the Jihad Virus?”
    “Well, yes.”
    “And solved the mystery of the Tide of Blood?”
    “That, too.”
    “So I come to you, Dr. McKean. Not to police. I feel I can trust you, because you work with my husband’s teacher, Smith.” She drew a deep breath and then said, apologetically, “It is true my husband made certain recordings. But he did not kill Smith.”
    “I had already come to that conclusion,” McKean reassured her. “His part in this is that of the student prankster.”
    “This is true,” she replied. “That is why I want you to talk with him but don’t involve police. My husband trusts nobody now but I convince him he must tell you what he knows. His life is in danger. Please help him, Dr. McKean.”
    “I’ll do everything I can,” McKean assured her. “Just tell us where he is.”
    “Meet us tonight at Ivar’s Restaurant on Pier Fifty-six, just before closing time, when not too many people are there.”
    “I have more questions,” McKean began, but she shook her head.
    “No more for now. Come tonight. Now, I must go.” She wrapped her scarf around her head and got up to leave.
    When she had gone I asked McKean, “You don’t suspect a trick or a trap? Maybe Yamani wants to eliminate us, too.”
    “I doubt she’d set us up,” McKean replied. “Her concern for her husband seems too genuine.”
    * * * * *
    We showed up at Ivar’s about fifteen minutes before closing and joined Fatima Yamani at a table in the back of the nearly empty restaurant. A man in a gray business suit was with her. He stood and introduced himself quickly and quietly as Ali Yamani. We sat and ordered coffees and then turned to the business at hand. Yamani, a small, mustachioed man with a British tinged Arabian accent, explained in urgent tones, “In 2002, I took a computer graphics course from Professor Smith. In class, I met a fellow named Omar Azziz, who said he trained with bin Laden in Afghanistan. In those days I was younger, angrier. I had some sympathies for bin Laden’s cause then, but no more. Omar said he had heard from a cousin in Afghanistan that Osama was dead, killed by an airstrike on his tent when he was fleeing the U.S. invasion and buried in a shallow grave in the desert. Omar also said he did not want the teachings of Osama to die with him and so we should make a false bin Laden video to keep his words alive. He had some old footage of bin Laden. Late at night in the UW’s computer labs, we would play the footage silently and say our own words over it, declaring holy war on U.S. imperialists and other things like that. Both of us agreed I did the best Osama bin Laden impression, like a comedian mimicking someone, only scary. So I was the one who made the voice recording.”
    “Omar and I tried to make the film of bin Laden move its lips with my voice, but we could not get it right. We also made his finger-waving hand move to make each point but that looked fake too, like a cut-out animation on YouTube. Then Professor Smith