One thing for certain: The administration was not going to love this story. If the mother was right, the government of the United States essentially had assassinated her son and everyone else in that house. I could imagine the phone call I was going to get from harmless, lovable Eunie. And who knows, maybe even an in-person scolding from one of her boys.

It could be worse, I thought. I could still be walking down dark streets in Fallujah.

(And within the flick of a Bic I remembered that in actuality that was not possible. So I guess it couldn’t be worse.)

7

When I was fifteen years old, I received first place at my high school science fair for an experiment showing the effect of X-rays on memory. I timed ten mice going through a homemade maze several times; then I exposed half of them to X-rays at my dentist’s office and ran them through the maze again. My prize was an invitation to a VFW dinner honoring astronaut Pete Conrad. The original Mercury and Apollo astronauts were my childhood heroes. These were American men risking their lives aboard American technology for the greater good of America. That was several years before Nixon turned patriotism into a political statement.

At that dinner Conrad told one of my favorite stories. “The night before they put you on top of a billion-dollar candle and light it up,” he admitted, “no matter how much confidence you have in the men and equipment, you still don’t sleep very well. I was scheduled to be awakened at four A.M. to suit up. I finally fell into a restless sleep about two o’clock. When I woke up, the sun was shining and the birds were singing. Great, and then I realized that the sun is not supposed to be shining at four A.M. I looked at my clock; it was after six. I’d spent years as part of the most complex engineering program in history; I’d been chosen from thousands of applicants and been in training for a decade. None of that mattered as I looked out into the morning sunshine and thought, Oh my god, they’ve left without me.”

That feeling of discombobulation in the pit of your stomach, of being late for something important, was exactly what I felt when my phone rang at eight-fifteen several mornings later. Jenny had worked late and stayed in her apartment. Shit, I’d completely missed my workout. “Thanks a lot, Cher,” I said sarcastically. “You were supposed to wake me. What is wrong with you?”

Cher did not respond. “Cher, remind me to call Y.” He’d figure out her problem.

Frankie B. was on the phone. “Working from home this morning, are we?”

“That’s how I earn those big bucks.”

“Then you don’t know?”

“What don’t I know?”

“Turn on the TV.”

I clicked on the big screen and lay in bed. I was pretty sure I knew what was going on. I’d posted my interview with Mustafa’s mother a day earlier: The mother of one of the alleged terrorists killed in Detroit by an elite antiterrorism unit claimed that her son, 23-year-old Mustafa Haddad, had no connection to the recent attacks. While admitting that Haddad was involved in the local drug trade, as police had reported, she insisted … My assumption was that my story had caused a ripple.