A gust of wind whipped icy crystals into his face. Samir Hasan squared his shoulders and picked up his pace.
With the cookie-making ingredients set out in the kitchen, Ellen decided to make herself a cup of tea. Taking out the china she had bought in New York City to replace the cup Veronica had broken recently, she realized she now owned an extra saucer, since the shop would sell her only the cup-and-saucer set. Turning the saucer over, she looked again at the name of the china pattern: Forget Me Not.
And then it happened again. A strangely unsettling feeling washed over her like a wave breaking on the side of her head, spilling down her arms and torso, producing a cold sweat. Gripping the saucer in one hand and the kitchen counter with the other, she saw again the marvelous shapes of topiary trees. And then, like a relentless lens trained on a reluctant subject targeted by paparazzi, her mind’s eye zoomed in on a sort of umbrella of pine needles. And, yes, there was the tuneless hum again. And more sounds came to her too. The moan of a man, the man seated stroking himself under the tree. After he moaned, he formed a word, a word starting with the sound of the letter F, and this time he finished the word. With horror, Ellen heard two all-too-familiar syllables, Flicka.
Swedish for “Pretty Girl.” Her father’s pet name for her.
“Forget me not!” Ellen cried out, shocked into a state of mind that was no longer dreamlike in the least. Keenly aware of the saucer in one hand, of the counter edge she gripped with the other, of the shriek of the teakettle, Ellen recalled, with a kind of exhilaration, the sound of a zipper in the shadows, her father standing up, emerging from the shadows, taking her in his arms. Then he pointed, thrusting out his finger as if to stab the air, and he bellowed, in an unfamiliar, throaty voice, “Forget me not, young man! I will not let you get away with this.”
Loosening her grip on the countertop, Ellen picked up a piece of chalk and wrote the words “FORGET ME NOT” on her blackboard. Her hand was shaky, but the writing seemed to settle her. She turned off the teakettle, and without washing the new cup, prepared herself a cup of tea in it.
Marveling at her mastery of these ordinary things, she carried the cup of tea into the living room, sat down in her chair, and then realized she had carried the extra saucer along without realizing it. She set the teacup with its own saucer on the side table and picked up her Arabic phrase book. Still holding the orphaned saucer in her left hand, she found herself tapping it on her thigh as, all at once, the flow of words, words in any language, seemed marvelous to her. So did the sound of her own voice. She sat and tapped the saucer against her thigh and read phrase after Arabic phrase with a facility that had heretofore always eluded her.
Meanwhile, Hasan had made his way to the Johanssons’ front steps. Hearing Ellen through the door, he found himself astonished again at this woman’s ability to surprise him. Perhaps her conversational Arabic was rather good, as he’d originally thought, even though she seemed perplexingly unfamiliar with the word for coffee and the names of some fruits. How could he be certain about the shaqra’s failure or success at understanding the code words? It was all too much for him. Utterly unmanned by the consternation he felt, Hasan did the only thing left to him.
He whispered a fervent prayer for guidance.
Only then did he reach out and ring the doorbell.
Startled, Ellen stood up, and set down her book. She was not expecting anyone. Still holding the saucer, she crossed the room and opened the door.
Hasan could take no chances. Even as he greeted her politely, he strode past her directly into the house, knocking her arm and causing the saucer she was holding to crash to the floor.
Allah be praised! This gave Hasan an excuse to bend down and assist in the cleanup, hiding his face while he continued to deliver the complicated greeting that he hoped would buy him entrée into the home.
“Dear lady,” he said, “I have news of vital importance, which I beg of you to hear.”
“Please, I’ll take care of that,” Ellen said, glancing at the shattered saucer. But she remained standing, afraid to squat near this intruder. “I must ask you to leave.”
“Please, it is for your good that I have come to say . . .”
“I will call the police!”
Hasan clenched the shard, cutting himself. “Ayah!” He cried out, dropping his backpack and the china and standing up suddenly, clutching his bleeding hand.
Alarm overcame Ellen’s instinct to help but Hasan cut short her effort to shove him toward the front door. Holding his uninjured hand over her mouth, he pushed her toward the back of the house, through the dining room and into the kitchen.
“Please, lady!” he urged, as Ellen squirmed free and rushed toward a block of wood holding a set of knives. To prevent her grasping a knife, he grabbed her hands with both of his, including his injured hand, dripping blood. Ellen slipped her left hand from his slippery grip. Disgusted, she shook her bloodied hand over the countertop.
“You!” she cried recognizing him fully now. “What are you doing here? What do you want with me?”
“Hamdu-lillah! I only want to—”
Ellen opened her mouth to scream.
Lunging, Hasan clamped his hand over Ellen’s mouth. But her panic gave her cleverness he did not expect. She relaxed all of her muscles, dropping in a quick movement toward the floor.
Just then, a gunshot rang out.
And Ellen finished her journey to the floor—arriving dead at the cabdriver’s feet.
Chapter 25
September 16, 2001
Unable to fly via Singapore, thanks to impossible flight delays in that hub of international travel, Liz decided to travel eastward from Fiji to Los Angeles. Entailing daylong waits in Fiji’s airport and then again in Los Angeles, the journey was a fruitful one for Banner articles on passenger frustration and airport security.
Liz finally arrived in Boston’s Logan Airport late in the afternoon of September 17. Taking a cab directly to Banner Square, she filed her stories and collected her messages before she returned to Gravesend Street. Pausing only to greet and feed a jubilant Prudence, she fell into bed and slept for twelve hours straight.
Only when Tom arrived at daybreak to feed Prudence did Liz awake. She began to apologize for her failure to phone and save him the trouble of feeding the cat, but then she broke off in the middle of the effort and said, “Oh Tom! I’m not sorry you’ve come. I’m so glad to see you!” And she threw herself into his outstretched arms. Exhausted from her trip and weary of holding herself together for days without emotional release, she simply sobbed.
After awhile, Tom left to pick up some groceries for Liz while she showered and made herself some coffee. Only then did she look over the telephone messages she had noted in the newsroom the day before. There was one from Doug Mayhew, the would-be rock star of Cape Cod, announcing he had written a “cool new ballad” in response to the terrorist attacks. There were two more from book publicists pushing authors of books about the Middle East as experts to be quoted in the Banner. And there was a call from a man with a Middle Eastern–accented voice, too