These saints, Saad says. In some way, they are like the Jews, or the Muslims, yes? They have difficulties—oppression, discrimination—and they come to the desert. They say this about themselves, maybe. We are like the Jews! It is not only these saints, of course. In this country, this always is possible. Enough! we say. We will go to the desert! We will make our own city. For ourselves, for our children. It will be a holy place, and just. We will know ourselves and our God by the shape it takes. So we build it. And people come, and more people. And then one day it is strange to us. No longer what we wanted. It has become, perhaps, the very thing we fled. So we go back into the desert, and we weep and pray that God or Fortune will flood the land, will bring the sea down upon the armies of Pharaoh, will erase our mistakes from the earth. But though the waters may rise, nothing is ever erased, or ever can be. The city is everywhere.
At some point Saad’s voice becomes Stanley’s, and Curtis knows that he’s asleep again, or nearly so: one foot trailing in the current of dreams. He tries to balance as best he can, so Stanley’s words won’t fade, and then he can see them, each word independent and alive, sprouting feather-leafed branches that bear other words, spoken in other voices. He can hear the voice of the old poet, Welles, and the voice of the Mirror Thief. His own father’s voice. Walter Kagami’s. Veronica’s. Danielle’s. The voice of the magician called the Nolan. The voice of the god Hermes. The clear quiet voice of the moon itself.
Then another voice, familiar. My fellow citizens, it says, events in Iraq have now reached the final days of decision.
Curtis jerks upright, claps a hand on Saad’s headrest. Shit, he says.
Are you okay, my friend? You were sleeping. We are almost there.
Curtis shakes his head, squints out the window. They’re downtown already, passing under the spaghetti interchange for the Vegas Expressway. A green sign has Charleston Boulevard coming up in a quarter-mile. Curtis’s throat is sore; he was snoring. What’s happening? he says. Did the war start?
The president speaks, Saad says. You are awake, so I will turn it up, okay?
Peaceful efforts to disarm the Iraq regime have failed again and again because we are not dealing with peaceful men, the radio says. Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
Saad exits on Spring Mountain Road. Hey, Curtis says, can we just cruise the Strip for a little while? I’d like to hear this.
Of course, my friend. Whatever you wish. Shall we say one dollar for each five minutes?
Curtis unties the arms of his jacket from his waist, finds the envelope in the inner pocket, opens it. Why don’t I just give you three hundred for the trip, he says, and you can tell me when you need to go home.
The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat, but we will do everything to defeat it. Instead of drifting along toward tragedy, we will set a course toward safety. Before the day of horror can come, before it is too late to act, this danger will be removed.
When it hits the Boulevard the Honda turns south, past Curtis’s hotel, past the pirate ships and the volcano, past the Bellagio’s dancing fountain. After all the walking Curtis has done it’s nice to be on wheels, nice to see all this stuff—the neon and the incandescents, the signs and the readerboards, the grab-bag casino entrances and the mirrorglass towers behind them, shiny masks with empty eyeholes—and to know that he’s not part of it. It took him a while to find the right table out here, but he figures he broke even.
All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end. Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within forty-eight hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing.
Okay, Saad, Curtis says. I’ve heard enough. You can turn around.
Saad hangs two lefts and hits the Strip again across from the Luxor, north of the crouching Sphinx. The boulevard seems busy for Monday afternoon. As they roll through the light at Trop Ave, Curtis sees a crowd gathered on the sidewalk by the Statue of Liberty—a keening pipe-and-drum corps, shamrock-green T-shirts and plastic hats—and he remembers what day it is.
Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them. If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.