Perspectives, An Intriguing Tale of an American Born Terrorist Read Free Page B

okay! You’ve crossed the line and I need to know what was going on in there.”
    He tried to speak but was overcome with exhaustion. “I’m really tired, can we talk about this later?”
    Mary realized that she had gone well beyond the doctor’s limits, but had a hard time holding back. “Jonathan, I can wait until later, but you are going to give me a full explanation.”
    Jonathan nodded.
    He closed his eyes and entered a tomb between life and death, terrorists and agents, with dreams about his children. He awoke suddenly with the thought, “Matthew’s dead!” And then hoping it to be a dream, he tried to recall all that had happened, not knowing what was real and what had come from the demons he had slept with in the underworld.
    Mary was napping in the chair next to his bed when he awoke. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was 1 p.m. and knew he had been sleeping for about 3 hours. He let Mary sleep for another 20 minutes and she woke as suddenly as he had.
    Immediately, as if there hadn’t been an interruption, Jonathan continued with his explanation, “You cannot repeat this, do you understand? Bob and I were working on a joint Homeland Security/CIA/Secret Service project. The operation was planted with the other federal employees to avoid detection.”
    It took Mary a few seconds to catch up with him because she was still disoriented from her nap. “Planted?” She snapped. “Jonathan, what in God’s name were you doing in there?”
    “We were an anti-terrorist group, studying all the signs, tracing emails that terrorists use to talk between cells, trying to prevent the very thing that happened.”
    The comment caused her anger to swell until it overflowed, “You fucking murderer! Well your operation didn’t do a very good job did it? Why would our government use children as a cover for you? How could you take a position like that and then lie to me? How could you put our children in danger and not even tell me? If we’re at war, why use children, our children as a decoy for soldiers? The kids were innocent, Jonathan; Matthew was just a baby! You killed our baby!” she started crying. “I don’t even want to look at you!” She backed away and went into the waiting room where she sat and cried.
    Jonathan lay alone staring at the ceiling, realizing that she was right. “How could I have been so stupid?” he muttered. “Of course they would figure us out; how best to attack a more powerful enemy than to attack their center, splitting their front line in half.” The shock of the death of his son Matthew began to overwhelm him like a dark shadow and he was enveloped by an unbearable mixture of grief and rage. Desperately trying to stop the pain, he clicked on the television, but found it impossible to listen to CNN with his mind swimming in so many directions.
    After about 30 minutes the door opened and Mary came back into the room, a different woman, with the cold attitude of a wife now forced to do her duty and take care of her husband. Her presence brought with it fear.
    “I’m so sorry,” Jonathan pleaded. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you and that I wasn’t there for you.”
    He was hoping that the damage done to their relationship was not permanent. The light in her eyes had turned dark and he sensed that the only compassion left was in the form of a base instinctual pity that one human being would have for a wounded human being.
    There was a long cold silence and then she began to talk staring blankly across the room. Her words were in a monotone and strained, “You were there, you were alive and you saved Carly and that was the only thing I had left to live for.” She laughed, “It’s funny the illusions we create. We think everything is going to go just like our perfectly conceived plans. You were my hero. Had I known what I know now, I might not have been able to make it.”
    “Come on Mary, you know I would never do anything intentionally to hurt Matthew and