“Normally, I could swim this distance,” Nadia said, “but under the circumstances, I don’t trust myself.” It was the first time she indicated her own agitation over the news.
The swim was anything but leisurely. Once on the yacht, they strained to see, on a miniscule television screen surrounded by some half-dozen tourists, the media coverage of the terrorist attacks on New York City. One viewer expressed confusion.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Why are we finding out about this a day later? They keep saying this happened yesterday.”
“We’re eighteen hours ahead of New York time,” the yacht owner explained. “In real time, the planes flew into those buildings while we were sleeping, at around three in the morning here. But it was around eight in the morning yesterday in New York City.”
Nadia prevailed on the yacht owner to let her use his radio. Liz stood transfixed in front of the television. Despite the tropical heat, she shivered. Nadia pulled her aside.
“My contacts say U.S. airspace is closed and is likely to remain so for days. I must move urgently. I cannot tell you where. It is best that you do not accompany me. I shall take the next Piper Cub to the main island.”
“I’ll help you pack.”
“There’s no need.”
“Yes, there is. It will steady me.”
With the images of the attack in her mind, Liz was grateful for the swim board as the two made their way back to the island. As Nadia strode toward their hut, Liz rushed to the outdoor dining area, which was open an hour earlier than normal. On the blackboard that usually announced the day’s specials, someone had written, “Breakfast on the house. We pray for the USA.”
Liz accepted two coffees, two bananas, and two slices of pineapple bread and carried them back to the grass hut. “Please eat some of this. You don’t know when you’ll have another meal.”
Nadia waved her hand toward a Piper Cub in the sky. It was headed for their island. “No time now,” she said.
Liz removed a notebook from the Ziploc bag she kept it in and stuffed the pineapple bread in its place. She zipped up the bag. “At least take this,” she said.
“And you take these,” Nadia said, handing Liz the postcard they had written during the night and a wooden bangle bracelet. “For Ellen.”
“Then you still have hope for her?”
“In times like these, hope may be all we have.”
As Nadia slogged through the sand, Liz stood before their hut, gazing at the extraordinary beauty of the sea spread out before her. Islands that she knew were surrounded by fabulous coral reefs thrust themselves up from the water, looking as remote and unspoiled as any place in the world could be.
Ravenous for this peacefulness, ravenous, even, for breakfast, Liz fetched the fruit and coffee and downed every sip and morsel of the meal for two, sitting cross-legged in the sand. Every so often she pressed her hand into the sand, as if to get a literal grip on the world.
Then she went to the boat dock, which was the hub for both boat and plane rides to and from the island. Learning she could not even leave for the main island until the following day, she signed up for a midnight fishing expedition. Then she swam to the yacht again and watched, as did people around the world, the relentlessly repeating images of planes slamming into New York City’s Twin Towers.
Finally, the day came to an end and, long after night fell, Liz made her way to the boat dock. No one else had signed up for the fishing expedition. Nonetheless, the guide was eager to take her out in his small motorboat.
“It will help you to sleep, the fishing,” he told her as he steered the boat out onto the black water.
“It’s so strange,” she said, “not to be in my newsroom when news like this is breaking. Here I am, a world away, in paradise.”
“The world is smaller than you think. When it comes to World War III, no one on Earth is a world away. And nowhere on the planet is paradise.”
Feeling stripped of the one illusion that had helped her get through the day, Liz tried to steady herself by looking at the sea. When the boatman turned off the motor, the vessel settled on water so still that the stars shimmered on the surface. Looking up, Liz realized the points of light were arranged in unfamiliar constellations. She was so far from home that even the stars offered her nothing to steer by.
The boatman brought her back to earth by handing her a drop line. “I’m sorry for the children tonight,” he said, as Liz dropped the lead-weighted line, with a small plunk, into the water. “This is a time for nightmares.”
They sat in silence, mulling over that thought for a long time, the serenity of the scene quietly protesting, “It can’t be so.” Then, Liz felt a strong pull on her line. With much ado, she hauled in a twenty-inch fish, the largest she had ever caught anywhere in the world. Under the boatman’s flashlight, it was revealed to be bright blue.
“That one is very good eating. You must have it for breakfast.”
“I couldn’t cook it. Please, take it for your family.”
“No, they will cook it for you at your place. Taste your good fortune before you return to the States.”
“Yes, all right.”
With enhanced sensitivity, born of the day’s trauma, to every small thing, Liz shuddered at the sound of the boat’s motor starting up again. It seemed to thunder the fact that she must return to a very changed world. She was grateful, at least, that the noise covered the sound of the beautiful blue fish’s last gasp.
Having traveled by train from New York City, Samir Hasan stepped off the Green Line trolley at the Newton Highlands T stop and pulled a sheet of paper from his small backpack that contained Ellen’s purse. He scrutinized the map he had printed on a computer in the New York Public Library. Then he set out in the direction of Fenwick Street near Newton City Hall. While making the half-mile walk along sidewalks banked with shoveled snow and crunchy with rock salt, he reflected that he was ill dressed once again. In the World Trade Center, it had been a question of style. Now the problem was fabric. His thin jacket, which was more than adequate for his work driving a heated taxi, was hardly hefty enough to fight the chill breeze that sent sheets of snow flying from piles all around him.
At least here, in a town of many Volvos and top-of-the line SUVs but few pedestrians, it was easy to tell no one was following him. Why did that provide him with a sense of relief? He wanted to believe he still had a chance to get the woman and himself out of danger. But how?
Why should such thoughts cross his mind? What was it about the shaqra that caused him to question the mission he had been assigned? Just because she moved to help him in the restaurant, just because she asked him about his son, were these enough to stop him from carrying out his promise?
What promise? He had never pledged to end this woman’s life. Not with his own hands. In the New York City mosque, when he’d been asked to transmit the list of code words, he knew the cause justified killing. Killing on a large scale, perhaps. But he himself was only a—what was it called in English?—a cog. A cog in the turning of a bigger machine. Now he was called upon to be the wheel that crushes. Was he man enough to do this deed? Or, was he strong enough to listen to his heart, to save this woman from the danger in which he had placed her?
Every time he considered warning her of the danger she was in, the thought was paired with panic about the practical aftermath of such an action. His own life would then be threatened, too. How would the two of them—together or singly—elude Fa’ud for any length of time? Perhaps the only course was to kill her.