City of Peace Page 11

  “Omar Bayati took first place,” she explained, “so he was invited to display a number of his photos. The other prize winners were allowed to contribute the single photo they considered to be their best. It’s remarkable that Omar took the top prize, since he was competing against professionals. He’s a talented young man.” She sighed. “It’s just too bad about his family.” Harley agreed that his work was quite good, thanked the clerk, and exited quickly into the brilliant sunshine. He sensed that the clerk wanted to get into a conversation about Omar and his family, but Harley was done with chatting for the morning. He wanted to escape to the water as quickly as possible.

  Harley fired up his boat and pulled away from the dock, enjoying the slight breeze rippling the surface of the river. The boat cut effortlessly through the water, and Harley loved the feeling of moving forward with no friction, no resistance, no tension, no struggle. He headed for the channel under the Route 123 bridge, not wanting to run into the rocks lurking beneath the water near the Occoquan shoreline, and then watched as the boat’s small wake sent ripples toward the shore and caused the sunlight to dance. He looked toward Maxine’s and saw children running along the public dock, chased by parents who didn’t want them to fall into the water. Ducks paddled out of his way, and a heron swooped down in front of him. As he passed under the bridge, Harley felt his blood pressure dropping.

  Boating had become meditation for Harley, an activity that enabled him to practice what his contemplative friends called mindfulness—focusing awareness on the present moment. On the boat, he had to pay attention to where he was going, with eyes open for kayakers and floating logs, but none of this activity required much mental energy. He simply looked and listened and experienced the river, occasionally adjusting the throttle and turning the steering wheel.

  After passing under the I-95 bridge, Harley looked to the shore and saw the huge rocks that had been put in place 300 million years ago. They were covered with large trees whose roots reached around the rocks, hugging them tightly and finally plunging into whatever soil they could find. He couldn’t tell if the rocks were supporting the trees or the trees were supporting the rocks. Harley envied that. He thought that such rootedness was a virtue. He wondered what it would feel like to hold on to something so solid, and to be able to grow and thrive with such a firm foundation. An old hymn began to play in his head: “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”

  Harley believed in Christ, but he had no roots. He had grown up an Army brat, moving around the country and then ending up in Germany for his high school years. He came back to the US for college and divinity school but didn’t feel a connection to any one place until he became involved with Karen and moved to Alexandria. His dad was a no-nonsense Army officer, a veteran of Vietnam with a three-pack-a-day habit, and he died of lung cancer a month after Harley graduated from college. His mother was softer and more spiritual, but she retired to Florida and remarried. Harley enjoyed visiting her in her new home and liked her new husband, but she developed ovarian cancer and was dead by the time Harley turned forty. He had grown up as an only child and often longed for a larger family. That was one of the reasons that Karen and Jessica were so precious to him, and why he became so close to Karen’s parents in Alexandria.

  Throughout his ministry in the Washington area, the five of them gathered frequently for birthdays and holiday celebrations. Sometimes Karen’s brother from Spokane would join them, along with his family, but usually it was just Jessica, Harley, Karen and her parents. They loved to eat and drink together, whether they were having a Fourth of July picnic or Christmas dinner. But after the Brussels bombing, Karen’s parents moved to a retirement facility in Annapolis, and he rarely saw them. He came to realize that Karen and Jessica were his roots, and without them he had nothing holding him in place.

  Harley found himself thinking of Karen’s parents as he steered the boat into the Potomac River and headed north. They had lived in the Mount Vernon area of Alexandria, and on their many visits Harley and Karen enjoyed walking along the trail bordering the river, which offered stunning views of the river and the Maryland shoreline. Now Harley was able to see their neighborhood from the water, which gave him a new perspective. It struck him that travel in colonial Virginia had been largely water-based, but now it was primarily land-based, with people moving around by cars and trucks and busses and trains. He enjoyed seeing the area from the water and feeling a connection with years gone by. One of his favorite destinations had become George Washington’s Mount Vernon home, which was hard to see from the land but spectacular from the water.

  As he motored north, he heard another powerboat approaching from the rear. He turned and saw that the boat was gaining on him quickly and would overtake him on his port side. It was a bowrider, similar to his own, with one person aboard. As the boat passed, a little closer than Harley liked, he looked carefully at the driver and saw a familiar face—Omar Bayati. He wouldn’t have recognized him if he had not just seen his picture at town hall, but he was sure that it was Omar. Speeding ahead of him was the Bayati boat that he had seen docked on the Occoquan River. Finally, he thought, the mystery man has revealed himself.

  To escape Omar’s wake, Harley steered right and headed toward the Maryland shoreline. Omar continued on a northward course, motoring toward Gunston Cove and Fort Belvoir. Harley wondered where Omar was heading, and as he adjusted his course he thought about what he should do. Harley felt strangely powerful at the helm of his 270-horsepower boat, and as he watched Omar’s boat disappear into the distance, he figured that he could follow the young man without raising any suspicions.

  Harley set a course for Fort Belvoir, following Omar, who motored slowly along the shoreline, keeping out of the restricted area marked by government buoys. Harley puttered around in the middle of Gunston Cove, trying to look like a pleasure boater and not attract Omar’s attention. Finally, Omar dropped anchor a few hundred yards from shore and simply sat in his captain’s chair, looking at the dock and the scattered buildings along the shoreline. Then Omar pulled out a fishing rod, attached some bait, and began to fish.

  After a few minutes, Harley figured that he would look suspicious if he continued to motor back and forth in the middle of the cove, so he took a last look at Omar and turned for home. He gunned his engine and returned to planing speed, heading south to the Potomac River and finally to the Occoquan. The mindfulness he had enjoyed on his way out was now replaced by speculation about what Omar had been doing on the river, so close to Fort Belvoir. Is he part of a terrorist plot to attack the fort? If so, what’s there that would make it a target? Did Omar paint the symbol of the Islamic State on the Occoquan rocks? Harley’s ruminations took him to a very dark place, and by the time he pulled into his dock, he was convinced that Omar was the mastermind of a local sleeper cell.

  Harley had a late lunch on the porch of his top-floor balcony, which gave him a view of the river to the east and the west. About an hour after he returned home, he saw a bowrider moving slowly westward through the no-wake zone. He picked up a pair of binoculars that he kept on the porch for bird watching and saw that it was Omar. Harley watched him pass under the Route 123 bridge, motor in front of the Victorian townhouses, and then pull into the Bayati dock. Omar climbed out of the boat and left the dock with nothing but a fishing rod and tackle box. Harley didn’t see any fish.

  The afternoon was filled with sermon revisions, but Harley couldn’t keep the events of the day out of his mind. He wasn’t sure what he had seen, or whether it mattered, but his gut told him that Omar was trouble. After making sure that the sanctuary was set for the Sunday service, he returned to the riverfront and asked for a table at the River Bar outside Maxine’s. He wanted to have something to eat and catch the beginning of Dirk’s set at seven o’clock.

  As he was escorted to his table, he heard a voice from a table at the edge of the bar.

  “Reverend Harley!” He looked around, not recognizing the voice. Then
he spotted the beautiful Tawnya Jones, sitting at a table with a man.

  “Tawnya? Good to see you.”

  Tawnya introduced him to her husband, Clyde. They shook hands and then Tawnya invited Harley to join them. He tried to beg off, but she took the bold step of asking him if he was meeting anyone for dinner. When he said no, she insisted that he eat with them.

  Tawnya told Clyde about how she and Harley had met at the Riverside Church and that Harley was the pastor who had lost his wife and daughter in the terrorist attack. She reminded Harley that Clyde worked in Army intelligence at Belvoir and said that they were enjoying a night away from their two-year-old daughter. She looked even better at the bar than she had looked at the church, with makeup on her face and her braided hair now accented by large gold earrings. Harley couldn’t tell if Clyde was annoyed that Tawnya changed the course of their date night by inviting Harley over, but it was pretty clear to him that Tawnya was in charge.

  “So, what brings you here tonight?” Tawnya asked.

  “My fried Dirk plays guitar here.”

  “Oh yes, I know who that is,” Tawnya said. “We’ve seen him here before. Not exactly our favorite music, but he plays and sings pretty well.”

  The trio made small talk for a while and Harley steered the conversation toward Clyde. “What’s it like to work at Belvoir? I know you can’t talk about what you do, but what is the place like?”

  “It’s a beautiful place, really. Surrounded on three sides by water, and heavily wooded. I’m a big runner, and I love to hit the trails on my lunch hour.”

  “We both love to run,” Tawnya interrupted. “But you know that, Harley. You caught me in the middle of a run.”

  “So, Army intelligence is there, where you work,” probed Harley. “What else?”

  “There is a hospital that serves a lot of service members and families,” said Clyde. “The officers’ club is fantastic, with a beautiful view of the Potomac. And there are a number of areas that are no longer used, but are mothballed and protected.”

  “Such as what?” asked Harley.

  “Well, Fort Belvoir was the center of the US biological weapons program from the ’40s through the ’60s.”

  “Really?” said Harley. “What is going on now?”

  “Nothing active,” Clyde said. “But you cannot just put old biological weapons in a landfill. They are in a secure location.”

  “By Gunston Cove?” asked Harley.

  Clyde smiled. “You know the old saying, Harley. ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you.’”

  CHAPTER 11

  On Sunday morning, Harley took his coffee up to the top level of his townhouse and looked westward up the river in the early morning light. He saw the Bayati boat tied to the dock and bobbing in the water. No sign of Omar.

  In the morning service at Riverside Methodist, he found himself frequently distracted by thoughts of Omar and was anxious to get down to the docks. Once he returned home, Harley grabbed his binoculars and saw that Omar was untying the mooring lines, preparing to leave the dock. Minutes after Omar pulled away, Harley prepared to chase.

  In his sermon that morning, he quoted the Danish philosopher Sören Kierkegaard, who had said that “purity of heart is to will one thing.” As his boat engine throbbed at idle speed, Harley realized that he was feeling a purity of heart that he had not felt for many years, and it was based on his single-minded desire to stop a terrorist plot.

  As soon as Omar’s boat passed under the bridge, Harley pushed the throttle forward and pulled out of his slip, steering carefully to avoid banging into the dock supports on either side. He looked around and was relieved to see a number of kayaks, canoes and powerboats on the river—this meant that he wouldn’t attract Omar’s attention as he followed him through the no-wake zone. The day was hotter than the one before, creeping into the low nineties, and the humidity lay like a damp wool blanket on the river. Plenty of people would be on the water in an attempt to cool down, providing lots of cover for Harley.

  A breeze blew across the river, and Harley remembered a similar breeze swirling around him on one of the greatest adventures of his teenage life. He was living on an Army base in Germany, where his father was stationed, and he had been hanging out with a group of classmates on a Friday night. They were bored, having spent the last few Fridays at the bowling alley, and were looking for something new and different. One of them suggested that they climb the base water tower, which stood about 130 feet tall. Harley was not a fan of heights, so he held back at first, but peer pressure quickly took over and he found himself alongside his buddies, sneaking through the woods surrounding the tower.

  First challenge was to scale a fence, which fortunately was not topped with barbed wire. Second challenge was to reach the bottom of the ladder, which was suspended above their heads to prevent just this sort of an unauthorized adventure. One guy put another on his shoulders to reach the ladder and lower it for everyone else. The third challenge was to avoid being caught, so they waited in the trees until the military police did their patrol along the road by the tower. Once the Jeep passed, the guys figured that they had time to get up and down without detection.

  Up they went, climbing the ladder single file, hand over hand. There was a cage around the ladder, so Harley was not afraid of falling off the tower, but he feared losing his grip and falling on the guy beneath him, creating a deadly chain reaction of bodies crashing into each other. He concentrated on the rungs of the ladder, one after another, making sure that his hands and feet always had a good grip. His breathing became labored as his heart pounded. About halfway up, a refreshing breeze caressed him. He had ascended beyond the tops of the trees around the tower and reached the point where the wind was not blocked.

  “Feel the wind,” Harley said to the guy below him.

  “Kinda scary,” said his buddy. “Just keep going.” But Harley was not scared; the wind felt like the Holy Spirit.

  From that point on, Harley lost his fear. In fact, the danger made him feel alive. He made it to the top, walked around the entire tower on the catwalk, and even left a message in permanent marker, Harley was here.

  Just as the breeze had calmed Harley on the water tower, it gave him a sense of peace on the river. Is this completely irrational? Perhaps. Harley could have been killed on the tower, just as he could die on the river. But something about the wind told him not to worry.

  “All will be well,” it seemed to be saying. “You are doing the right thing. Trust my power.”

  Harley continued to follow the Bayati boat into Occoquan Bay and the Potomac River. He dropped back a bit on the open river because the traffic was lighter and he didn’t want to spook Omar. He kept him just within eyesight as he traveled north on the familiar route toward Fort Belvoir. Then, when Omar slowed his boat near the Belvoir shoreline, Harley cut back on his throttle as well, and cruised slowly westward in the middle of Gunston Cove.

  There were several jet-skiers darting around the cove, so Harley figured that their noise and wake would keep Omar from focusing on him. Harley pulled out his binoculars and trained them on Omar, who had killed his engine and was floating freely. The young man had a camera with a telephoto lens, and he stood in the center of his boat taking pictures of the shoreline.

  He cannot be doing nature photography, thought Harley. No way. There are no historical buildings along the shore, no subjects for pictures like the ones on display at Occoquan’s Town Hall. He must be doing some kind of surveillance, some kind of spy photography.

  Just then, a police boat appeared, lights on and siren wailing. It was on a course for the Bayati boat, moving at high speed. “Got him!” said Harley out loud. Keeping his binoculars on Omar, he saw the young man drop his camera and leap into the captain’s chair. He cranked the ignition, hoping to run away from the police boat. Stupid plan, thought Harley, but hey, the kid is still a teenager. He is as good as caught.

  The police boat sped past the Bayati boat and headed farther east into Guns
ton Cove. Harley saw a look of relief on Omar’s face, but it only lasted a second. Next, Harley saw raw terror, and when he shifted his binoculars he discovered the reason—Omar’s engine was on fire!

  In his haste to escape the police boat, Omar had forgotten to run the blower in his engine. He cranked the ignition and set fire to the fumes in the engine compartment. Within seconds, tongues of flame were visible and thick black smoke billowed out of the boat. Omar grabbed a small fire extinguisher and shot it at the engine, but the flames were already out of control. Harley saw him grab his camera and stumble toward the front of the boat, desperate to escape the flames. It would only be a matter of minutes before the gas tank exploded.

  Harley felt a breeze across his face and knew that he had to do whatever he could to help the boy. He dropped his binoculars and pushed his throttle forward. His boat quickly accelerated to planing speed and arrived at the bow of the Bayati boat in seconds.

  “Get off your boat!” he shouted to Omar. “Swim to me. She is going to blow!”

  “I can’t swim!” yelled Omar in a panic. He looked small and helpless in the bow.

  Pushing the throttle again, Harley made an arc in front of the Bayati boat, and when their hulls were almost touching he yelled for Omar to jump. The young man leapt off the bow of his boat and landed in the stern of Harley’s boat, immediately losing his balance and falling onto the rear bench seat. Harley forced the throttle all the way forward, causing the boat to leap almost out of the water. When they reached planing speed, they heard a loud explosion behind them. A ball of fire rose high into the air, followed by an enormous cloud of black smoke. The Bayati boat was engulfed in flames.

  Omar held his camera to his chest and stared in shock at his ruined family boat. He looked like a stunned child, with eyes wide and mouth hanging open. Harley knew that they couldn’t leave the area until the firefighters and police arrived, so he slowed his boat to a crawl once they reached a safe distance.