What Changes Everything Page 12

  Already wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, she tied the laces to her tennis shoes, tugged a sweatshirt over her head and slipped downstairs. Her stomach felt hollow. Hunger had largely left her during these last days—she"d always been an indifferent eater, but now she found herself forgetting about food altogether until she"d notice her hands were shaking. Ruby kept dropping off dishes, and Clarissa didn"t have the heart to tell her to stop. Clarissa"s kitchen had grown crowded and she felt guilty having all that food around as if she were preparing for a party. Now, by the light of the refrigerator, she ate half a yogurt, putting the remainder back before going out the side door on the ground floor.

  The air had fallen still, almost tranquil, something that happened only at night in the city and rarely even then. It felt crisp, but tempered by a bit of Indian summer. The street lamp in front of her building spilled a murky teardrop on the sidewalk. To the left was the known neighborhood, to the right, less so. She hesitated only for a second, then turned right and began to walk, focusing on long strides, wanting to feel her body in motion, her arms swinging. Her sluggishness diminished with each step. At the corner, she headed toward Eastern Parkway, relatively well lit, and began to walk under the shadow of its paired trees, their kissing branches like a promise above her head.

  She tried to relax as she walked. She wished she could think about something else for a while, but she couldn"t, and now the previous day"s conversation with the FBI ran through her mind. Jack on the speakerphone, Ruby, Mikey, Bill Snyder and Clarissa sitting in her kitchen.

  "One more contact," Jack had said at the start of the conversation, and she"d felt her breath catch in her throat—each "contact" felt hopeful and abrasive at once. The Feds had a local guy speaking to the kidnappers separately, even as Amin tried his own path. To Clarissa, it seemed a little muddled, but Jack told her they didn"t want to let this connection go unless Amin seemed to be making what he called "bankable progress."

  "They repeated their demand for $1.5 million," Jack said. "They also said they"d like to speak directly to you, Clarissa."

  "They asked for her by name?" Mikey asked.

  "To his wife, they said. We told them we would check to see when that would be

  possible, and they are calling again this week, they said."

  "What do they want with Clarissa?" Mikey"s tone was protective.

  "They aren"t getting anywhere with our negotiators on the ransom request," Jack said. "We"re stalling, and they get that. I think they"ve decided to go for the heart."

  "Shouldn"t your negotiators be more skillful?" Bill Snyder asked.

  "Should I talk to them?" Clarissa interjected, not waiting for an answer to that pointed but rhetorical question.

  "Yes, I think you should," Jack said. "Right now they see Todd as goods. If they talk with you, they might begin to see him as human. We"d like to hook up your phone so the conversation can be recorded. We want you to say you want to achieve a solution and you want your husband home. Nothing else."

  "Shouldn"t she ask to talk directly to Todd?" Bill Snyder asked. "Wouldn"t that be natural? Won"t anything else sound phony?"

  "Look." Jack sounded slightly impatient. "Let"s run through where we are at this moment. From the three contacts we"ve had, we believe Todd is still in Afghanistan, and probably in the hands of criminals, as opposed to the Taliban."

  "Of course our man on the ground has said that all along," Bill Snyder said. "So your guys are catching up to that viewpoint?"

  "Well, the lines are blurry over there," Jack said. "Intel is cautious in making a call on this. But they note the kidnappers haven"t issued any political demands, which kidnappers who solely identified with the Taliban likely would. This impacts the way we negotiate, and actually in a good way. It gives us a little more leverage. "

  Bill Snyder gave an audible exasperated sigh. Clarissa hadn"t warmed to Jack either, but she decided she would talk to Bill privately later about adopting a more cooperative attitude, for Todd"s sake.

  "So ultimately we really have no idea who has Dad?" Ruby asked.

  "They are terrorists," Jack said, "but we believe they"re contingent terrorists, not absolute terrorists."

  "Which means what?" Clarissa asked.

  "They don"t have much of a political agenda. It"s about dollars. On the other hand, we"ve tried hard to talk down the dollar amount they"re demanding, and they haven"t budged at all. That concerns us."

  "Why?" Ruby asked.

  "If they"re holding out so completely, they probably have a Plan B. And that likely involves selling Todd to the Taliban. The Taliban is aware of Todd"s presence, obviously, and there"s probably been some discussion of transfer of goods. Sorry, but remember, to them this is business."

  "We get that," Clarissa said.

  "Right. So his situation is relatively stable at the moment, but if the kidnappers start to feel the monetary negotiations are irrevocably stalled…" He paused. "In that case, they would sell him—for less than they hope to get from us, but at least for something—to the Taliban or, even worse, specifically the Haqqani network. Haqqani"s group is pretty intractable. Then your husband"s situation becomes significantly worse. I can"t stress that word enough. Significantly."

  He didn"t repeat aloud the question about permission to rescue, but Clarissa knew it dangled in the silent space on the phone line. She let her eyes linger over the faces in her kitchen. Ruby"s position had not changed, and Bill continued to absolutely oppose military involvement. Mikey had told Clarissa privately that he thought if a military operation was to be attempted, it should be sooner rather than later, while Todd was physically stronger.

  Why couldn"t Clarissa simply say yes? Why did her gut keep saying no? Was that really what Todd would want?

  On Eastern Parkway now, Clarissa passed a suitcase abandoned next to a bench, and then a parked car with a man sitting in front, dancehall reggae blaring from his dashboard radio. "Givin ya mi man juice, jah mi baby madda, so we can passa-passa, oohman mi naa jesta." Indifferent to her destination, she cut in toward St. John"s Place. She'd already left behind the few landmarks she knew from this neighborhood and was passing boarded-up brownstones and apartment buildings she didn"t recognize.

  As she walked, she tried to visualize Todd. He"d always made her think of the ocean. His tall, lanky body belonged to a lifeguard, but his eyes were long and fish-shaped, and his lips sprawled above his chin like they were lounging on a beach, enjoying themselves. His hair was graying, but still brown with a touch of gold from the sun. And his arms had always seemed surprisingly muscular; she"d teased him once that it was a shame they were so often hidden beneath shirt sleeves. His voice held a scratchy undertone, as though he were a smoker, though he wasn"t.

  She found herself remembering a trip they"d taken, right after they got married, to Tombstone in Arizona. Todd appreciated her interest in cemeteries, though he didn"t share it. On this day, she"d done research and was ready to show him around the cemetery she"d never visited. Before she could, though, he"d taken her hand authoritatively, as if he knew where to go. He"d led her to a rock-covered grave marked with the epitaph they"d both laughingly read aloud in unison: "Here lies Lester Moore. Four slugs from a .44. No Les, no more."

  She could recall with precision the heat of the sun and the dust of the cemetery, the ocotillo cacti and the spiny palo verde trees with their tiny, thirsty leaves. The feel of Todd"s hand, warm but dry, as they weaved between the tombstones. The closeness between them combined with the frivolity of the moment and the pleasure she"d taken in the fact that he"d brought her to the very gravesite she"d intended to show him. It was as if they had communicated without words.

  Why couldn"t they communicate that way now?

  An ice cream truck passed, playing its repetitive tune. Too improbable to believe it patrolled the streets at this hour looking for ice cream lovers; likely it was hawking something else. Clarissa stopped at that thought, wondering when she"d become so cynical, so convinced that little was as it
appeared to be.

  She glanced up at the street sign above her head: Ralph Avenue. She"d never had the occasion to walk here before. The sidewalk was more littered than hers; the buildings presented themselves less gracefully. In front of one boarded-up door lay an empty Georgi vodka bottle. At the corner stood a bodega and a beauty salon, both sleeping behind metal shutters for the night. She paused, dropped her shoulders and waited, listening to her own breath. What do you want, Todd? Do I trust Amin? Do I tell Jack they can barge in with guns? I want this to end, I want you home. I want you alive. So give me a sign.

  She stood motionless and waited, expectant, for several minutes. But nothing came, nothing at all, and quietly, adamantly, she cursed.

  Danil, September 12th

  Danil, crouching, paused from his work to watch an approaching woman halt and turn statue-like on a street corner in the dark half a block away. She didn"t seem desperate and she didn"t act frightened or high. But it was all backwards to see a woman alone in this neighborhood at this hour. If you did, she"d either be a crack whore yelling a waterfall of curses, or she"d be alert and nervous, head bowed, legs moving like a racetrack engine. In neither case would she gaze directly ahead, pausing as if to meditate, like she was in some yoga studio in Brooklyn Heights.

  Danil straightened and thought about calling out to her. Would it scare her to hear a voice emerging from the darkness? If she was sane, certainly yes. And if she wasn"t, which was more likely, wouldn"t he simply be starting shit for no good reason? Just last week, a man on a bicycle had paused at 3 a.m. and begun telling Danil a history of nearby Nostrand Avenue, which seemed potentially interesting until he started including details of the lives of the devils he said hid beneath the fire hydrants, cracking the sidewalks when they emerged in the afternoons. Danil finally had to pretend to be finished, walking once around the block, relieved to find the man gone when he returned a quarter of an hour later. No thank you.

  As he watched, considering his options, the woman seemed to shudder. She muttered something, and then began walking again, passing without appearing to notice him, though near enough that he could have taken two steps forward and touched her. She was a bit over five feet tall with frizzy hair to her shoulders, slight in build, maybe in her late 30s. Her face was focused, but she didn"t appear crazy, or blurred by alcohol or drugs.

  Again he thought about calling out, scolding, warning. Hey, this is central Brooklyn. The economy sucks. Folks get desperate or crazed and then rub up right against other folks. What"re you doing? Go home.

  People didn"t realize how often they put themselves at risk, how many hundreds of times each week in ways both little and large. "Accidents" were nearly always, in retrospect, entirely predictable, that was one thing he"d learned at a cost, though not soon enough to teach his little brother. One simple mistake led to another, and then it spiraled out of control. The plane crash: preventable. The bicyclist hit by a car, the fire that starts in the fifth-floor apartment, Al Capone shooting himself in the groin. The soldier killed by friendly fire. There is an order in which things are broken, rules as quantifiable as gravity, if scientists would only turn their attention there. Within that order, logic dictates some woman who chose to venture out onto the street on a blind-eyed middle-of-the-night stroll could well be the city"s next victim of violence.

  Someone should warn her, this woman who didn"t seem to understand.

  As she moved away, he became caught in an airless moment of doubt. Here he was, faceto-face with a question that had been nibbling at him for months. How much responsibility did one person have toward another? If what you mainly had in common was being alive at the same moment and in the same physical space, and then being present enough to see a need, how far must your outstretched hand reach?

  Put another way: what did family, in the broadest sense, mean?

  This interlock of blood connections, this steady entity that traveled together over

  generations, linked by a sense of common history and a mandate of loyalty—what happened when that history frayed, interpretations of the past divided, loyalties unraveled? At that moment, wasn"t it fair to rethink the narrowness of an obligation to those who first tucked you in at night, and revise the definition? Couldn"t Joni be his sister? Couldn"t a woman on the street at night be his aunt?

  And, in return, shouldn"t someone else look after his own mother?

  So here he was. His theory in practice. And his turn.

  Who was he? Someone who helped, or not?

  Then his mind swung the other direction. Only fifteen minutes more, that"s all he needed to finish up here, to complete the only undertaking that brought him relief: this time, the face of a soldier in a purple splotch of color. His more mature way of saying: fuck your war. See? He was growing up.

  This woman wasn"t in immediate trouble, as far as Danil could tell. Besides, he had to watch out for himself. Out here, no one had his back but him. He had to stay aware, cemented to his surroundings, and at the same time operate as if in a bubble, his energy focused on his work. It took effort to get into that space and he wasn"t ready to move out of it yet.

  But maybe this was the way it happened: one excuse after another to divert one"s eyes, to let the stranger walk by. To pretend need didn"t exist.

  He took a deep breath, and shuddered in an echo of the woman"s tremor. Then he silenced his mind and turned back to the stencil on the wall: his loud whisper in the dark, a public intimacy, a swipe of spray paint that, remarkably, soothed like a lullaby.

  Todd, September 12th

  "You love your country?"

  "Yes I do," Todd said. "But I also love Afghanistan."

  "Bah." Sher Agha made a scoffing sound. He"d arrived this morning and, watching him through the window, Todd had become doubly certain he was in charge. It was in how Sher Agha held his shoulders back while talking to the other guards, and in the way they leaned in toward him. He wore a white turban. Deep dimples sunk into his cheeks. His face reminded Todd a little of Ahmad Shah Massoud"s, only more worn, and his eyes did not contain the thoughtfulness of Massoud"s.

  Todd sat uncomfortably in the middle of the room. His ribs were still painful. They"d also bound his ankles right after dawn prayers for no reason discernable to him, and that made it impossible for him to stand. "Afghanistan," Sher Agha said, "is not one country. I am Pashtun. Your country makes patriots. People like you who think of themselves as American, without loyalty to the land of their grandfathers. But this does not make you open-minded. America does not produce humans. Humans would not behave as you have in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo."

  "I agree that was wrong. But it wasn"t me."

  "Yes," Sher Agha said, nodding as if with satisfaction. "And then you, all of you, deny responsibility. This is your pattern."

  Todd opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, he heard, so clearly it almost seemed real, the voice of Amin. Stay silent.

  "And even those of you who pretend to do good—to build schools, to…" and here Sher Agha glared at Todd, "to help refugees—you are liars."

  "I am not a liar." Again, Amin"s voice, more urgent. Stay silent. And in fact, Todd regretted his words as soon as he said them. They gave more power to this man; they legitimized the accusation. He shifted his weight slightly to the left, but kept his gaze firm.

  Sher Agha bent over and looked into Todd"s face, as if examining an insect. "What is your religion? You are Jewish?"

  "Raised Christian. But I am not practicing."

  "So you are Godless."

  Say no. "No." Todd took a slow breath before continuing. He reminded himself of his long practice of pausing before breaking silence. "I believe," he said after a moment, "in one God who cares about us all. Who pays no attention to borders or ethnic differences."

  Sher Agha straightened and ran his fingers into his dark beard. "But you don"t personally worship this God? You don"t want your own holy book?" He gave a short laugh, then added: "You do not feel that prayer will be useful to you now?"


  "I pray," Todd said. "In my own way." Say yes. "But yes, thank you, I will take a copy of the Bible."

  "Your own way." Sher Agha spit on the floor. "So does the heretic." He strode around the edges of the room, circling Todd once before turning to face him again. "You have no photograph of your wife?"

  Todd met his gaze but did not answer. He did not want to talk about Clarissa. He was trying to hold her in a special place in his mind, apart from this situation, so that when he thought of her, it would feel like a sliver of freedom. He needed that now, and he didn"t know for how long he would need it.

  "But why not?" Sher Agha asked after a moment.

  Todd laughed, a cracked sound he barely recognized. "Your men didn"t offer me time to gather my belongings."

  Sher Agha scoffed. "The foreigners I have met, they carry pictures of their wives. If they love them."

  Should he ignore that remark or refute it? This all felt like some kind of complicated test that he was struggling through, doing poorly, and that would be crucial later.