The Faithful Spy

No answer. She should have been home by now, cooking dinner. Acid rose in his stomach. His wife had been late twice in the last week. Her respect for him seemed to be vanishing by the day. Tarik had met Fatima in Paris during the spring of his final year at the university. She was the oldest daughter of an imam in Brussels, a petite eighteen-year-old whose hijab— the head scarf worn by pious Muslim girls — framed her big brown eyes. Tarik was smitten instantly. He was ecstatic when he found she felt the same about him, despite his pockmarked skin and thick glasses. They married four months later, just before he moved to Canada. She followed the next year. For a few months she seemed like the perfect wife, loving and supportive. She didn’t question the long hours he worked at McGill or spent in the basement. But then she began complaining that Tarik wouldn’t let her work. She was bored staying home all day, she said. In the spring, she had found a job as a secretary for a law firm downtown. He had tried to forbid her from taking it, but she’d just laughed.

“Then divorce me,” she’d said. She knew he would never do that. She was the only woman he had ever been with. He was sometimes frightened by how much he wanted her. But her job had increased the distance between them. She hardly listened to him anymore. He couldn’t understand this other side to her. She seemed to have forgotten her place since she’d come to Canada. But maybe she had never cared for him at all. Maybe she had seen him as just a chance to escape her father.

A month before, he had hit her for the first time, on a night when he tried to make love to her and she turned away. He had raised his fist, not intending to touch her. Then she smiled. She was mocking him, he thought. Mocking him for his weakness, for his skinny arms and caved-in chest, just like the kids in Saint-Denis had done. He might be weak, but he was still a man. She needed to remember that. He swung his fist into her belly. She cried out, just once, and he wanted to comfort her and tell her he was sorry. But he held his tongue.

When he reached for her later that night, she gave herself to him without complaint. In fact she never mentioned what he had done. For a few days Tarik thought she had learned her lesson. But in the last couple of weeks she’d turned secretive. He’d overheard her whispering on the phone in the kitchen. When she saw him listening she hung up and pretended she hadn’t been talking at all. He raised his fist at her again, but she just shook her head, and he dropped his hand and turned away in humiliation.

tarik tried to put Fatima out of his mind. He would talk to her when she came home. In the meantime he had to work. He unlocked the door to the basement, revealing a narrow enclosed staircase that led to another locked door. Tarik knew the twin locks might look suspicious, but he couldn’t take the chance of allowing anyone down here. Besides the plague, he had anthrax and tularemia in his refrigerators downstairs, all classified by the CDC as grade A pathogens, all delivered from Muhimbili.

To preserve his privacy, Tarik kept his distance from the other McGill graduate students, accepting their invitations to socialize only when his absence would be conspicuous. He told classmates that his wife was a devout Muslim who didn’t go out, and he told Fatima that the other students were prejudiced and never invited him. He couldn’t stop her from meeting the neighbors, but he discouraged her from bringing anyone to the house, one reason she insisted on working. Maybe that had been a mistake; maybe he should have let her have more friends.

Tarik put his key in the padlock at the base of the stairs. He needed to stop thinking about Fatima. Now. If he allowed himself to be distracted down here he might make a mistake, and if he made a mistake he could easily die. He breathed deeply, closed his eyes, and cleared Fatima from his mind.

When he was sure he was ready, he opened the second door and stepped inside.

he had spent most of the last two years just setting up the lab. The equipment was expensive, and installing it without attracting attention was difficult, especially since he had to work alone. But this summer, just in time for the arrival of Y. pestis, he had finally gotten the space into order.