The Mirage: A Novel by Matt Ruff Read Free Book Online Page B

him.
    “Look at that, the whole gang.” Samir pounded Sinbad on the shoulder. “Dude, you bring good luck.” But Sinbad was less enthused. As Costello sat down with the Hoffman brothers, Sinbad pointed to a green knapsack under the table beside Peter Hoffman’s chair. “What do you suppose is in that backpack?”
    Mustafa said: “We recovered all the stolen explosives.”
    “All the stolen explosives from the army base,” Sinbad said. “But you can find explosives in a university engineering department, too. Or make them in a chemistry lab.”
    “So what do you suggest we do? Call in SWAT and have them loan you a rifle?”
    “I’ve got a rifle in the trunk. But if I use it we’ve got no one to interrogate.” He thought a moment, then reached forward to toggle a switch on the dashboard. A warning panel lit, reading AIR BAGS DISABLED .
    “David?” Mustafa said.
    “Unbuckle your seat belts and brace yourselves. Be ready to jump out as soon as the car stops moving.”
    He drove forward before Mustafa could argue with him. When the car was almost at the coffee shop, Sinbad gave the steering wheel a hard jerk to the right and leaned on the horn. As the car swerved onto the sidewalk, Costello and Martin Hoffman jumped up and dove out of the way. But Peter Hoffman bent down and reached for the backpack. Sinbad hit the gas and plowed into the table moving faster than he’d intended; the car clipped the front corner of the coffee shop and slewed around to a stop.
    Mustafa, despite bracing for impact, was thrown forward into the dashboard. By the time he stumbled from the car, Costello had hopped back onto his motorcycle and Martin Hoffman was fleeing on foot. Peter Hoffman had disappeared—or so Mustafa thought, until he looked down and saw a hand sticking out from under Sinbad’s car.
    Costello kicked the cycle into life. Samir grabbed his wrist and tried to haul him off the bike, but Costello swung his helmet with his other hand, catching Samir in the face. Samir tumbled backwards and Costello twisted the throttle and raced away in the direction of the campus.
    “Go after Hoffman!” Sinbad shouted. “I’ll get the American!” He reversed into the street and roared off after the motorcycle.
    Martin Hoffman had run to a car parked across the street at the east end of the block. He stood beside it, slapping his pockets for keys, then looked back helplessly towards the coffee shop. He saw Mustafa coming for him and ran into the Ghost Music superstore on the corner.
    Mustafa entered a moment later with his gun drawn. A few dark-haired students circulated among the racks of magazines and comics at the front of the store, but there was no sign of Hoffman. Searching for the German, Mustafa’s gaze was drawn to a display of bright yellow books offering easy education in divers subjects: Algebra for the Ignorant; Desktop Publishing for the Ignorant; Yazidi Culture for the Ignorant; and in a special pile, the post-November 9th bestseller, now heavily discounted, Christianity for the Ignorant.
    Samir came into the store, followed closely by Amal, Hamdan, and several other agents. They spread out into a line and began a systematic sweep. In the video-game aisles, an exchange student stood up suddenly from behind a shelf of cheat manuals; he looked nothing like Hoffman save that he had blue eyes and pale skin, but it was only the grace of God that kept him from becoming a news story.
    Mustafa found himself in an open aisle between two entertainment mediums and two warring sociopolitical viewpoints. To his left, in the DVD section, a bank of flat-screens showed the governor of Lebanon, in his previous career as an action-movie superstar, maneuvering a jump jet between the skyscrapers of Beirut and using the plane’s nose-cannon to annihilate an army of terrorists, all of whom looked like relatives of the man Mustafa was chasing. To his right, in pop music, a wall of speakers and subwoofers blasted out the punk band Green