The Sleeper Read Online Free PDF

happened. Some people know I was a mujahid, and they came after me. I got out through Canada and came here. But I don’t know where to go now.”
    â€œHow did you get into England?”
    â€œIt’s easy if you look like me.”
    â€œBut you came with your own passport.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSo they know you are here.”
    â€œThey’ll figure that out,” I said. “That’s why you’ve got to help me. I need a new passport. I need to know where to go.”
    Abu Seif looked me up and down. “I will search you,” he said. I raised my hands again. He patted down my legs and felt under my arms. I couldn’t read his expression. “Would you like some tea?” he said. “Have a seat. I will get some.” He stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him. I heard him shouting in Arabic, and a woman’s voice answering. Then there was silence for a minute or two. I picked up the letter opener from the desk and studied the designs. The blade was surprisingly sharp against the sworled surface of my thumb. The scabbard, which I hadn’t noticed before, was half-hidden by a newspaper. “Granada,” it said in flowery letters. A souvenir.
    I watched the door as I heard Abu Seif’s heavy footsteps. I couldn’t be sure if he’d be bringing reinforcements, or carrying a weapon. But all he had in his hand was a tray with two glasses of hot tea and a bowl of sugar.
    Abu Seif sucked the steaming drink into his mouth. “Why do you think I can help you?” He wiped his mustache and beard with his sleeve.
    â€œI’m hoping,” I said.
    His expression seemed to consider my hope. He looked me up and down again. Then he glanced at his watch, which looked like a Rolex. The steel band was embedded in the fat of his arm. “I must get back to my audience,” he said. “The interval is over. And—there is nothing I can do for you.”
    â€œJust a contact,” I said, trying to control a kind of anger I hadn’t felt in a long time. This fat, phony son of a bitch held the keys to what I needed, and he was going to sit on them.
    â€œYou may finish your tea,” he said, and put the earphones on again. “Bismallah al-Rahman al-Rahim.” On the screen in front of him, nickname after nickname appeared: Zamzam, slaveofallah, SAD412, ameer_20, friendlyboy, alf_laylah, tiger-eye, amaze_15. Abu Seif took his finger off the Control button on the keyboard, turning off his microphone for a second. “I am not going to help you,” he said, and turned back to the screen.
    â€œBrother, I understand,” I said. “I am sorry, but I understand. Can you give me a number to call a taxi? I will have it meet me down the road.”
    â€œA taxi?” Abu Seif was turned completely away from me and toward the screen. He shook his head like he couldn’t believe I would ask for a taxi. I looked at the roll of flesh bulging behind his neck. He pulled up his address program on the screen and typed in the password.
    I rammed the point of the letter opener into the back of his neck, driving it home like a tenpenny nail, straight and true above the third vertebrae, then widened the hole with a quick move back and forth. The cartilage popped, and with it the nerve. Abu Seif rolled off the chair, twitching just a little, then he lay still. More tea spilled across the floor than blood.
    He was the first man I’d killed in almost nine years, and I was glad it was clean. I sat down at the microphone and watched the text messages roll. “Can’t hear you,” wrote alf_laylah. “Something wrong with mic,” wrote slaveofallah.
    â€œMoment…” I typed. “Someone else speak?”
    SAD412 came on the earphones, and began to talk about takfir —the “anathema” heaped on hypocritical Muslims.
    I opened my Yahoo home page, and started uploading Abu Seif’s address files