Albin Larsen stepped up to the lectern and began talking in a low voice. No niceties, no thanking the audience. Right into the topic.
Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people.
Larsen spoke fluently with minimal inflection, smiling wryly as he noted the “profound historical irony” of Jews, the victims of oppression, becoming the world’s greatest extant oppressors.
“How odd, how sad,” intoned Larsen, “that the victims of the Nazis have adopted Nazi tactics.”
Murmurs of assent from the audience. Milo’s face was expressionless. His eyes shifted from Larsen to the audience and back.
Larsen’s manner stayed low-key but his rhetoric poured out hot and vindictive. Each time he uttered the word “Zionism” his eyes fluttered. The audience began warming to the topic, nodding harder.
Except for the burly guy in the pea coat. His hands had dropped to his knees and he was rocking very slightly in his front-center seat. Head canted away from the lectern. I caught a clear view of his profile. Tight jaw, clenched eyes.
Milo studied him some more, and his own mandible tensed.
Larsen went on a while longer, finally indicated George Issa Qumdis with an expansive wave, took out a sheet of paper, and offered morsels from the professor’s academic résumé. When he finished, Issa Qumdis walked to the podium. Just as he began to speak, footsteps behind Milo and me made both of us turn.
A man had entered our aisle. Midthirties, black, well groomed, very tall, wearing a well-cut gray suit over a charcoal shirt buttoned to the neck. He saw us, smiled apologetically, retreated.
Milo watched him edge away and hook a quick right turn. The black man never reappeared and Milo’s hands began to flex.
Why all the tension? This was a lecture at a bookstore. Maybe too much work with too little outcome. Or his instincts were sharper than mine.
Professor George Issa Qumdis unbuttoned his jacket, smoothed back his hair, smiled at the crowd, cracked a joke about being accustomed to lecturing at Harvard, where the audience hadn’t reached puberty. A few chuckles from the audience. The guy in the pea coat began rocking again. One of his hands reached behind his head and scratched vigorously.
Issa Qumdis said, “The truth—the inalienable truth—is that Zionism is the most repugnant doctrine of all, in a world rife with malignant dogma. Think of Zionism as the pernicious anemia of modern civilization.”
One of the pierced-and-brandeds snickered into his girlfriend’s ear.
Issa Qumdis warmed to his topic, branding Jews who moved to Israel “nothing less than war criminals. Each and every one is deserving of death.” Pause. “I would shoot them myself.”
Silence.
Even for this audience that was strong stuff.
Issa Qumdis smiled and smoothed his lapel, and said, “Have I offended someone? I certainly hope so. Complacence is the enemy of truth and as a scholar, truth is my catechism. Yes, I’m talking about jihad. An American jihad, where—”
He stopped, openmouthed.
The guy in the pea coat had shot to his feet, and shouted, “Fuck you, Nazi!” as he fooled with the buttons of his coat.
Milo was already moving toward him as Pea Coat whipped out a gun, a big black gun, and fired straight at Issa Qumdis’s chest.
Issa Qumdis’s snowy white shirt turned to crimson. He stood there, wide-eyed. Reached down and touched himself and came away with a red, sticky thumb.
“You pathetic fascist,” he burbled.
Still on his feet. Breathing fast, but breathing. No loss of balance. No death pallor.
Red rivulets wormed down his shirtfront and filthied the edges of his jacket.
Besmirched, but alive and healthy.
The man in the pea coat fired again, and Issa Qumdis’s face became a crimson mask. Issa Qumdis cried out, wiped frantically at his face. Albin Larsen sat in his chair, amazed, immobile.
“Oh my God,” someone said.
“That’s pig’s blood!” yelled the man in the pea coat. “You Arab pig-fucker!” He charged toward Issa Qumdis, tripped, fell, righted himself.
Issa Qumdis, blinded by blood, kept swiping at his eyes.
Pea Coat raised his weapon. Black plastic paint gun. Shrieking, “Fascist!” a woman in the second row, one of the gray-hairs, shot to her feet and grabbed for the weapon. Pea Coat tried to shake her off. She clawed and scratched and got hold of his sleeve and hung on.