The Sixth Station Read Online Free PDF

Service agents simultaneously jumped out of the van, assault rifles at the ready, wearing body armor and helmets, followed by two other “plainclothes,” who stood on either side of the open door. The terrorist Demiel ben Yusef appeared in the opening. He stepped out of the van, an agent in front and in back, his head down. He was shackled hand and foot with heavy chains that were just long enough to allow him to walk. A bulletproof vest bulged beneath his jacket.
    Although we’d seen video of him a million times, he was much smaller than I’d expected—maybe five-nine, with no heft to him at all—even thinner than he normally was, since he’d been fasting for the past month. But his scruffy long beard, waist-length dreads trailing out from under his NYPD riot helmet, dark, swarthy complexion, and calm face were nonetheless unmistakable. He was, after all, the most famous man in the world.
    His attorneys had dressed him for the occasion in a second-rate dark blue suit, white shirt, blue-striped tie, and fake leather loafers that smacked of cheap when they hit the ground.
    “Dear God! I could lift him with one hand,” Dona said, directing her sexiest smile his way.
    The troops began rushing him inside as the roar of the reporters grew deafening. “Over here! Demiel! Over here!”
    Demiel, suspected terrorist leader and mass murderer, whom many called “Savior,” simply shook his head so slightly that eyewitnesses—of which there would be thousands more than were ever there that day—would later say it was more of a thought than an actual motion. While that motion would remain forever in dispute, what I can never dispute is that after that shake, thought, or whatever it was, everything grew quiet—for me, at least.
    In fact, for me it had all become so still that the deafening din on the packed streets, which moments before had sounded like the roar of ten oceans, went so quiet I could hear a single birdsong in the park. I think it was a robin.
    It even seemed that the federal agents who were supposed to be perp-walking Demiel—parading him in shackles for the benefit of the media—slowed down and walked calmly, neither rushing him nor pushing him.
    It felt as though a mass fugue had suddenly affected nearly everyone who had come to see the sight. It wasn’t until later that I learned that I was the only one who was suddenly so calm and distant.
    I could hear Dona’s remote Minicam running next to me. I was holding on to my reporter’s notebook, but I was no longer all that interested in writing anything down. It wasn’t that I couldn’t; it was just that I didn’t want to.
    All I could really focus on was Demiel slowly moving forward, the sound of his shoes slapping the pavement growing louder as he came nearer to me. And then that sound seemed to die away, too. When the shackled suspected terrorist was right in front of us, he stopped and looked directly at me. I could see the pores in his face, the small irritation where his starched collar had scraped his neck, and even smelled his freshly laundered shirt.
    Reflexively, without knowing why, I returned his stare.
    He leaned into me, and I could hear the hundreds of reporters, in unison, letting out a muffled “Ohhhh,” as I stood there, unmoving.
    Then he kissed me on the lips.

 
    3
    It took a quarter of a second for the federal agents to realize what had just transpired on their watch. It took another quarter of a second for ben Yusef’s two “handlers” to spring back to action in unison, shove him hard, and hustle him inside the building.
    Immediately the world around the UN came back to life for me—the din, the frenzy—as though it had never stopped. The realization that something very, very strange had happened finally hit the crowd as ben Yusef was being hustled inside.
    When I personally could no longer see him, I became conscious that my fingers were on my lips. I’d done it blindly, unaware that anyone was watching, when in fact the