The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (Part 34)

Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF versionOkay, so he was in Yasser Arafat’s Fuhrerbunker. It was where he wanted to be, wasn’t it? It was where the Keepers of the Fleas hung out, where they kept the homing devices that controlled the Fleas from the Prophet’s Beard, fleas that were still alive after 1,400 years and still capable of spreading death, disease, destruction and ignorance across the world—the Fleas of the Islamic Apocalypse. He should have been happy. Corralling even one of the little bloodsucking jumpers would be quite an accomplishment but he couldn’t help thinking something would go wrong. One of the fleas had been on its way to poison a Coptic well in Egypt when it had escaped its minder by jumping to the beard of a passing goatherd. It hadn’t been seen since. It must have been a Sufi flea. It was not the first mission it had failed. The defection, or apostasy, if that was what it could be called, had caused great consternation among the Keepers. They had met in Cairo. Asma bint Marwan had sent Piffy to Gaza to find the homing device that kept track of the fleas—especially the homing device for the Sufi flea, as it had become known. It was said the tracking device, or monitor, was wrapped in an original copy of Jimmy Carter’s Roadmap For Peace, supposedly drawn by the President’s own hand after a kiss on the cheek from Yasser Arafat. The map and the monitor were reputedly kept inside the Fuhrerbunker. A cakewalk—right; get rid of Carter, grab the homing device and beat it! They could have sent Deputy Dawg on this mission. It was so simple it was scary. But there was Carter. What should he do about the former President? Should he talk to him or bop him on the head—lightly of course, like he would bop Paris Hilton, not that he had ever bopped Paris Hilton though he had once taken it under consideration. The President’s voice was still rising and falling in the background. “America has survived Ronnie Reagan…thank God…it has survived George W. Bush…thank God…but it will never survive the machinations of that Jew Netanyahu…never…I am so sad I could cry…the Judenfreuden have ignored one UN Resolution after another…the Jewish lobby in Washington…Apartheid will be the end of us…Dear God, if you promise not to send another rabbit after me…Oh, give me strength…I must write another book…one book is never enough…I must write and write until my fingers fall off…I must write until I convince the American people that I am right and they are wrong….How can they be so blind…” He paused. “It was the Jews… the Jews that caused me to lose the election to Reagan in ’80…the Jews…the Jews…the Judenfreuden…” The more Carter talked the more humane the bop on the head option seemed to Piffy. But he should have been paying more attention to his surroundings than to the drone of the ex-President’s voice. Someone had come up alongside of him in the darkness. He tensed. “You’re early,” a man whispered in his ear. “None of the others have arrived yet.” Piffy thought quickly. “I, ah, caught the early bus by mistake,” he mumbled. “Who are you?” “I am Maltese, the caretaker,” the man said. “If you will follow me…” He had a thin pencil-point flashlight in his hand and he played it across the floor to light the way. Piffy nodded at Carter. “What about him?” he asked. “Oh, he’s okay, “ said Maltese. “He comes here all the time. He doesn’t bother anybody and nobody bothers him. Most of the time he just cries. He has a pass from Hamas. He’s supposed to be a famous man.” Piffy followed he caretaker down a spiral stairway, through a boiler room filled from one end to the other with wheezing turbines and into a dimly lit conference room. I don’t believe I know you,” said Maltese. “Are you new?” Piffy looked the man over carefully. He would do. He was close to Piffy’s size and was dressed the way Piffy should have been dressed. Perhaps a change of clothes could be arranged but with negotiation time at a premium Piffy decided to skip the preliminaries. He hit Maltese on the head hard enough to stun him and in less than thirty seconds he had stripped the man of his clothes, had gagged and hogtied him and had stuffed him into a convenient closet. He was becoming quite proficient at this business, but even then it was a close call. He had scarcely pulled up his mujahideen pantaloons when three men came into the conference room. He had heard them a ways off so he had been forewarned and he was sitting at the conference table when they entered. One of them was wearing a white robe and a checkered kaffeyeh. He was obviously the oldest by quite a few years. The second man could have been mistaken for an ordinary Muhahideen. It was the third man that caught Piffy’s attention. He was youngish, had a mustache, a scraggly beard, hair that needed trimming and a beret sporting a red star. Piffy had seen that face before—a hundred times; a thousand times—he had seen it plastered across sweatshirts, T-shirts, windbreakers, handbags, coffee mugs, paper plates, posters; he had seen it on everything but reward posters and baby diapers. It was Che Guevara. So the rumors he had heard were true—the Keepers had hired Guevara to do their dirty work! “We are glad to have you, Senor Che,” said the man in the white robe. “It’s Comrade Che,” corrected Guevara. “We have been having trouble with this one particular Kuffar, as you no doubt have heard,” said White Robe. “His name is Piffy—even now he is in Gaza poking around. “I have handled Capitalist swine before,” said Che. “I am a Cubano… ha, ha, when I am not a Brazilian or a Columbian or a Muslim, ha, ha.” And then he looked at Piffy. “And who are you?” he asked. The question caught Piffy by surprise. Yes, who was he? He hadn’t had time to make up a name. He couldn’t say he was Bernard Piffy—that would give the whole show away and it would be suicidal too, he was, after all, unarmed. He could say he was Mohammed. But Mohammed who? Mohammed Jones? White Robe came to Piffy’s rescue. “We do not ask people their names, Senor Che,” he said. “It is best if we do not know each other or at least pretend that we do not.” “But you know me,” said Che. He was not convinced. By then more men had arrived and they continued to arrive over the next few minutes until the conference room was fairly filled. Piffy counted twenty Keepers, some were wearing robes, some were in civvies; one man was in a military uniform. There was a murmur of conversation. The last man to arrive was a portly little fellow who appeared to be in a hurry. “Where’s Ahmad?” he demanded. He glanced round the conference table. “He called this meeting and now he’s not here?” “He’s enrolling his daughter in the Osama bin Laden Madrassas for suicide bombers,” said a man in a brown robe. “Isn’t she the one that sings that Mockingbird song?” asked the man next to White Robe. “That ain’t the half of it,” volunteered a man that could have passed for Telly Savalas. “She entertains Kuffar boys in her bedroom and runs off to MacDonald’s whenever she pleases. If she were mine I would knock her in the head and be done with it.” “Ahmad is too lenient,” someone commented. Only in Islam would a man like Ahmad be considered too lenient. And then someone quoted from the Qur’an. “He who fears will mind,” he said. The Imam—he must have been an Imam—closed his Qur’an and peered over the tops of his spectacles. “Take the Mocking bird song,” he said. “Music is a senseless activity. If I may quote the great Mustafa Sabri, ‘Music is a state of passiveness. The benefit and pleasure taken from music involves a meaning of deep slavery in passion. Since Islam is the only enemy of passiveness slavery in passion, an important duty of Islam is to search their traces in unexpected hideouts. During listening to music, people would not be doing any good for humanity.” Che Guevara was staring at Piffy. “How about you?” he asked. “What do you think?” Piffy grinned. He had been reading the newspapers. “I’d rather eat a mermaid than sing that silly Mockingbird song,” he said. That caught the Imam’s attention. “Praise be to Allah!” he said. “It’s about time somebody settled that mermaid controversy!” “Mermaid?” said the Keeper in the military uniform. “Yes,” the Imam said enthusiastically. “Thanks to Shaykh Muhammad al-Munajjids we can now safely eat mermaids.” “If anyone ever catches one,” scoffed a Mujahideen. “And only if they are properly slaughtered,” laughed the man across from him. “Properly slaughtered?” scoffed the Mujahideen. “If it weren’t for the Ayatollah Knomeini you wouldn’t know how to dispose of the camels you rape!” “Please, please, those were not rapes, they were temporary marriages.” Piffy shook his head. This was disgusting but they knew what they were talking about. The Ayatollah Khomeini had written extensively on the proper way to dispose of an animal—a mule, a cow, a camel—after having had sex with it. It should be slaughtered and the meat sold to another village, not to one’s own. How many years of study it had taken him to come to that conclusion no one would ever know. If Pope John Paul or Jerry Falwell had spent so much as five seconds writing or thinking about such things they would have been drummed out of their religions quicker than a bar fly could snatch a drink from a blind man. It was no wonder Piffy was a Christian—albeit a non-practicing one—and not a Muslim. Guevara was getting edgy. “I got things to do,” he said. “I can’t sit here all night waiting for Ahmad.” “Neither can I,” said the Imam. “This mermaid decision is the most exciting thing to happen in Islam in a hundred years” Someone suggested an adjournment and it was agreed to without a vote. White Robe looked a Guevara. “How did you enjoy your first meeting?” he asked. “Fine,” said Guevara. He had not enjoyed it at all. “Do you have any questions?” asked White Robe. “Si, now that you mention it,” said Che. “When I came in…Who was the guy sitting in Arafat’s chair?” “Didn’t you recognize him?” said White Robe. “That was Jimmy Carter, the late Chairman’s friend, the former President of the United States of America.” “Carter…Carter…” mused Guevara. He smiled. “Do you consider him an important man?” “No,” said White Robe. “He is quite the fool.” “Then I shall kill him!” announced Guevara. “Carter?” gasped White Robe. “You shall kill Carter?” He could not have been more stunned. “ No! No! Not Jimmy Carter!”” “Yes,” said Guevara. “That is what I am paid to do. He was once a useful idiot but he has outlived his usefulness.” “But…but…he is harmless…harmless…” spluttered White Robe. Guevara drew a long-barreled gun from inside his military jacket and laid it on the conference table. “Does anybody have any trouble with this?” he asked. In the silence that descended on the conference room one could have heard a flea jump from a cat’s whisker to the shrubbery on a goatherd’s chin, from the Prophet’s Beard to the stubble on a private detective’s cheek. Smiles were frozen in place; frowns were etched into grotesque shapes. A chair squeaked; someone cleared his throat, a harsh rasping sound. Killing a president could lead to an International Incident. It could possibly involve Barack Obama! At last White Robe stirred. He made a half-hearted attempt to rise. “We have no way to dispose of a body down here,” he said weakly. The scene could not have been more intense had Jimmy Carter walked into the room. And then, as if on cue, Jimmy Carter walked into the room! (To be continued)