Treason Read Online Free Page B

Muslim.
    â€œI had this specially made by a jeweler for your birthday,” Dheeh said, handing her husband a black jewelry box. She had waited until he was about to leave the Tacoma Park house that they were renting to present him with his birthday present. A taxi was outside waiting to drive him to the Capitol Hill television studio.
    Adeogo quickly opened the box and discovered inside it a lapel pin shaped like a wood-handled broom. The broom had been his campaign symbol. When the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party had endorsed Adeogo at a press conference, Dheeh had handed him an old-fashioned stick broom and declared: “Use this to sweep out corruption in Washington.” Photographers and political reporters had loved the gimmick because it was a thinly veiled attack on the Republican incumbent, who’d been caught paying a staff salary to his elderly mother-in-law even though she lived in a locked dementia ward in Florida.
    â€œIt’s perfect!” he said approvingly. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. Dheeh lowered her eyes. Theirs was an arranged marriage and even though they had been man and wife for fifteen years she was still uncomfortable with physical signs of affection.
    She attached the gold pin to the lapel of her husband’s off-the-rack Men’s Wearhouse gray suit. “I know you will do well this morning. You practiced your statement all night.”
    â€œIt is not my statement I’m worried about. You know what I’m talking about.”
    She did. It was a secret from his past. Decker Lake had uncovered it while Adeogo was campaigning for office and had used it to manipulate him. With Lake now dead, Adeogo should have been able to relax. But Adeogo realized that if Decker Lake had found the skeleton in his closet, someone else could too. Someone new could use it to control him.
    â€œYou are not responsible for your younger brother’s actions,” she said.
    â€œYou believe that, but others will not,” he replied, turning to leave.
    Studio A was crowded. As he stepped behind the podium, the reporters’ faces disappeared into darkness. He could not see beyond the first row of chairs because of the spotlights now shining in his eyes. He could hear only their detached voices shouting questions.
    â€œDid you know the terrorists or their families in Minneapolis?” a reporter yelled.
    â€œNo, there are more than a hundred thousand Somali Americans in Minneapolis and while we are a tight-knit community, I didn’t know either of them or their families.”
    â€œThe embassy in Mogadishu was attacked last year by a jihadist named Abdul Hafeez who also was from Minneapolis. Why are Somali Americans joining these radical groups?”
    â€œISIS is targeting men and women who are eighteen and nineteen. They were born in the United States but don’t feel like they are Americans. Of Minnesota’s five largest immigrant groups, Somali Americans have the highest unemployment rate—almost thirty percent. Joining ISIS gives these young people a cause and a purpose. This is why we must teach them that these groups are perverting Islam.”
    â€œBut it’s not actually a perversion of Islam, is it?” a voice called out.
    Adeogo didn’t recognize the voice and couldn’t make out the reporter’s face because he was seated at the back of the studio.
    â€œYou Muslims can’t claim Islam is a peace-loving religion when the Quran openly calls for violence against nonbelievers,” the reporter continued. “Your prophet, Muhammad, ordered Arab tribesmen, who had killed some of his slaves, to be punished by having their hands and feet cut off, their eyes gouged out, and their bodies thrown upon the ground until they died.”
    The room turned eerily silent. Normally, reporters would call out questions simultaneously. Now they were waiting for Adeogo to answer.
    â€œI am not here to argue religion. But I