Free The Amateur Spy by Dan Fesperman Page A

appreciation from 1981, when, as a young trauma surgeon of twenty-seven, he was among the doctors who saved the life of President Reagan following an assassination attempt. He was there when the stricken president dropped to one knee in the emergency room and gasped, “I can’t breathe!” And he was the doctor who, three hours later, found the bullet lodged in the president’s chest, flattened to the size and shape of a dime. Although, now that Aliyah thought of it, she hadn’t noticed the White House letter in its customary place the last time she visited his office.
    Aliyah punched in the 9-1-1. So much portent to those numbers now, with all they had brought upon this country, this city, her family.
    “It’s been reported,” the operator said brusquely.
    The pace of Washington never ceased to astonish her, especially in its recent push to do more with less. Even at her office, a national charity that raised money for the poor, there was a huge effort to cut and streamline.
    She unlatched the door of the Volvo, wondering if she would be able to bear the sight of the accident. Blood made her squeamish, but as a doctor’s wife she felt obligated to pitch in. The Ford was pinned to a lamppost beneath a huge oak, which was shedding yellow leaves on the wreckage. Abbas had pried open the passenger door and was leaning across someone. Blood dripped onto the pavement.
    A police car rolled to the curb between her and the Ford, blue lights strobing. She heard the wail of an ambulance approaching from downtown. Abbas withdrew from the Ford for a second, as if coming up for air. She could never fathom how he stomached all the gore, and she was thankful for the blinding glare of the windshield as the sun emerged from a cloud. Poor Abbas already looked pale and spent, and he still had a long day ahead. She had heard him moving around downstairs very late the night before, the TV droning loudly.
    A policeman stepped from the cruiser. He put his hands on his hips and watched Abbas. Next to him was some fellow in a business suit who had drifted down from a Starbucks for a closer look. The drivers still passing on Connecticut Avenue were now at a crawl. The rubbernecking had begun in earnest.
    Aliyah was about to volunteer her version of events when the policeman turned toward the man in the suit and asked loudly, “Who’s the Arab guy?”
    He said it in the tone Aliyah had been hearing for four years running, a goading note of suspicion that demanded to know whose side you were on. This time she boiled over.
    “The
Arab
guy is a doctor!” she said, her vehemence taking the officer by surprise. “He is also my husband, and he saves lives for a living.
Saves
lives. Do you understand this? He is trying to
help
those people!”
    The cop raised his hands in mock surrender, but didn’t back away. Then he smiled, which only made her angrier.
    “Easy, lady. Just trying to sort out the players. I’m glad he’s here to help. Now if you and this other gentleman could step back, I’ll get the scene under control.”
    Liar. A sassy reply rose in her throat, but she didn’t dare. Not after the last time she had talked back to a policeman, two years ago in New York. Their family picture had run on page two of the
Daily News,
a tourist photo filched from the dockside concessionaire of a Circle Line cruise. A bunch of stupid, baseless accusations and a senseless arrest, all because her son, Faris—
a structural engineer,
for God’s sake—had dared to shoot video footage as the boat passed beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. Plenty of other tourists had done the same, but none of them was speaking Arabic, as Faris had been doing with a college friend from Cairo, excitedly describing the engineering wonder of the support towers and buttresses.
    The police had hauled them in for questioning, and Abbas’s name had turned up on some watch list, thanks to a donation he had made six years earlier to a Palestinian charity that had since been deemed