The Girl at the Border

by Leslie Archer

  “Jesus, Richard. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s in the past.”

  “What happened to Ben?”

  “Dead, of course. Shot to death by one of our porters. A Syrian with, as we found out later, ties to some obscure extremist group or other.”

  They were near enough to the shore now to pick out individual rocks and up on the cliffs the dusty trees, leaning as if into an eternal storm. The wind had died to nothing. The sea was following them home.

  “That’s when I became interested in these splinter groups—small, deadly, infinitely more fanatic than al-Qaeda or the Taliban. I spent longer in Sinai than I had expected. Most everyone at the dig wanted to go home, of course, especially the Americans. And there was Ben’s body to consider, not to mention his family. But of course none of us could get back to the States for weeks. I stayed on after, learning everything I could.”

  “Wasn’t that dangerous?”

  “In a way, that was the point, wasn’t it?” He slowed them, steered for their landing place, where the boat’s owner waved in cheerful welcome. They paid no attention to him. “I mean Ben and I were side by side. He died, and I didn’t.” He shrugged. “Survivor’s remorse all over again, right? Anyway, I learned a lot in those six weeks after 9/11, including how to speak with these people.” He sighed. “Also, we were incredibly lucky today. They were looking for a sailboat filled with drugs. Nothing to do with us. Nothing at all.”

  Of course, she didn’t believe him—not completely, anyway. But it wasn’t until they were back on dry land, the sea and the launch with its bristling peril behind them, that she felt enough time had passed to ask, “What really went on between you and the pirate leader? Was he really looking for a sailboat full of drugs?”

  “Absolutely.”

  They were climbing the steep, heavily striated slope from the shingle to the top of the headland. The moon was high in the night sky now, and its light threw the landscape into a chiaroscuro of black and white. She felt a cool breeze on her back and, shivering slightly, wound the scarf tighter at her throat. The scarf was a favorite of hers, a blue-and-purple Udhampur Indian print she had purchased in Diwali, a shop on the Ile Saint-Louis in Paris. Permanently imprinted by this morning’s invasion, she would never look at it the same way again. The Udhampur was a symbol both of her terror and of her release from its grip.

  “You’re giving me the CliffsNotes version.”

  “And?”

  “And cut it out.” She gripped his elbow, turned him toward her. They smelled of sweat and the sea.

  He smiled, but there was no mirth in it. For a moment he looked away, out to the sea, which was a shattered mirror reflecting moonlight in a multitude of tiny crescents. Not a sign of their encounter remained or would ever be found. It was lost in time, if not in memory. Nevertheless, all her emotions had been brought to the surface; she felt raw and for the first time in years terribly vulnerable.

  “All right.”

  They walked on a bit in silence. Above them stretched the stars in profusion, the Milky Way a ghostly river, the sky both infinite and intimate. There was something primitive about the night; if they had been walking this strip two millennia ago, she had the sense it would look just the same. This notion soothed her somewhat.

  Was he trying to order his thoughts, or was he debating how much to tell her? She fervently hoped it was the former. She felt she had earned the right to hear it all. She was shaken, and she wondered how he could be so cool and calm.

  At length, Richard said, “The leader’s name was Achmid.”

  “Arachnid is more like it.” Make a joke, defeat the memory’s power. “A big-ass spider.”

  Richard gave her a weak smile.

  “He was, indeed, looking for drugs. He said they were his. Whatever. But I lied when I said he wasn’t interested in us. He was. You, especially.”

  A cold hand clutched at Angela’s belly. Her heart was in her throat; she found it difficult to swallow. “Go on,” she said, though part of her mind was screaming, Enough. You’ve heard enough.

  “He had taken a fancy to you. I told him that you were mine.”

  “You told him we were married?”

  “No. Listen to me. What I told him was that I was bound to you through obligation.”

  “What sort of obligation?”

  “Familial. That’s what matters most. Family. There’s an honor there that cuts through nationality, religion, ideology.”

  “It works,” she said, “until it doesn’t.”

  “Yes. ISIS, for example. But these people weren’t ISIS.”

  “As you said, we were lucky. What did you tell him?”

  “That I had promised your mother I’d take care of you or die trying.”

  “And he bought that?”

  “Angela, it’s not what you sell; it’s how you sell it. I sold. He bought. End of story.”

  But it wasn’t the end of the story, not for her and—miraculously—not for Bella either. Though Richard immediately fell asleep with his clothes on, she, wired and gritty, took a long shower, scrubbing her skin, as if she might wash away the day’s fear. Not surprisingly, it didn’t; her sleep was patchy and restless, invaded by nightmares that kept her near the surface of her conscious mind. As if hearing a noise she could not identify, she started awake. Richard was sound asleep. His phone was glowing, casting a bluish light into the darkness. She turned on her elbow and picked it up.

  Hey, from the other side. If there’s a line to my father thru u I’ll take it. Everything’s so . . . nothing makes sense & it’s worse bc of Maggie . . . I don’t want to write abt her. Tell me abt u I want to know u shd I like u or b jealous?

  Tears immediately sprang into Angela’s eyes. The girl’s emotions, even expressed electronically, reverberated through her like the tolling of a bell, echoing her own past so completely that she realized she would have done anything to have a lifeline to an older woman when she was Bella’s age.

  Heart and mind both racing, she began an answer to Bella, her thumbs blurred over the keypad.

  OK if u feel both

  After a pause:

  lol

  In this postmodern shorthand they conversed long into the night, near the end of which Bella wrote,

  You don’t know

  This frightened her, and she immediately wrote back:

  What don’t I know? What’s wrong?

  Bella’s last reply:

  I wish I was like u. I wish I was u. I hate it here. I wish I wish I wish

  “I worked and worked, and what did she do? She bought and bought.” Eddie Springfield sat hunched over at the kitchen table while his daughter served him the dinner she had made.

  Ever since Kelli had left, Laurel had taught herself to cook and bake all of her father’s favorites—steak frites, lamb ragout, fish and chips—as well as introducing him to dishes like lollipop chicken, pasta primavera, and chess pie, meant to cheer him up. He made them breakfast, as he almost always had, but he barely touched the food on his plate in the mornings.

  He ate the dinners she prepared, though, grateful for her presence as well as her growing expertise. He was home by dinnertime now, and she made sure she was back at the brownstone to greet him. The one time she was late, she found him sitting on the stairs, in the same spot where she used to fall asleep waiting for him, his head in his hands, tears staining his face.

  “Working two jobs, Rabbit,” he continued now. “It was the only way to keep her happy, keep her in the clothes and finer things she craved.” He looked up from the plate she’d placed in front of him, his eyes enlarged with tears. “But she wasn’t happy, was she? It wasn’t enough. It was never enough for her. She always wanted more, always berated me for being a failure. ‘The only thing keeping me here,’ she told me once, ‘is this brownstone. I always dreamed of living in a townhouse in the West Village.’ Can you believe that? ‘What else can I do, Kelli?’ I’d say, and she’d laugh and say, ‘
That’s the problem, isn’t it?’”

  Laurel put her own plate down and went to him, put her arms around him, kissed his temples. “I love you, Daddy. I always have. I always will.”

  A sad smile broke out across his face. “I know, Rabbit. I love you too.” And he kissed her in return. “What would I do without you?”

  Some version of this conversation occurred at nearly every dinner, after which Eddie would disappear into the bowels of the house, God alone knew where. Laurel never followed him. She was too afraid of what she’d find. Sometimes, after she’d cleaned up in the kitchen, she’d find him in the living room, staring at the front door, as if by his will alone he could bring his wife back to him. Then she would sit beside him, quietly, feeling his sorrow flow into her in waves. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she read to him. He loved old-school detective stories—Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot—but his favorite was Rex Stout’s gentleman detective Nero Wolfe, perhaps because he lived in a Manhattan brownstone, and it was these books she read to him most often. His face would soften; his shoulders, up around his neck with an awful tension, would relax into their natural position; and he would sigh. “I love this guy,” he would say every once in a while.

  There was a rare Nero Wolfe he wanted Laurel to read to him. It took her two weeks of searching before she found a paperback copy of Death of a Dude, and when she started to read it to him, he turned and embraced her. “Rabbit, Rabbit,” he whispered. “Imagine Wolfe traveling halfway across the country to a dude ranch in Montana.” His voice wistful, almost eager, as if he, too, wanted to make the journey Nero Wolfe had undertaken. “I never thought I’d hear that case again.”

  Later that night, watching him climbing the stairs to bed, Laurel couldn’t help but wonder what became of the brokenhearted.

  The next day, after school, she went to a travel agent. Using money she had made winning chess games, she booked her father two weeks at the best dude ranch in Montana for the following spring. It was a Thursday, the day Orfeo asked her to dinner with his family. After preparing his meal, she left a note telling her father she’d be late, that dinner was waiting for him in the oven, the temperature already set. All he had to do was turn the oven on for twenty minutes.

  She was jumpy with nervous excitement, anticipating the look on her father’s face when she presented him with what she was certain he’d call his Nero Wolfe Trip. Nevertheless, she was so beguiled by Orfeo’s family that she stayed far later than she had intended. She stayed too late.

  Years later, she would come to the sad realization that for her parents it had always been too late.

  The story of Richard versus the Terrorists was over, but the echoes would resound in the chambers of her heart for some time. But there was another story, in its way just as dramatic and far more public, about to be played out. It confronted Angela and Richard the next morning when they emerged from his tent to eat breakfast.

  The entire camp was teeming with TV, film, and magazine cameramen; reporters; technicians; pyramids of electronic equipment from Hellenic Broadcasting, Rai, ARD, CNN, PBS, BBC, Reuters, AP, Archaeology Today, Stern, and, it seemed, countless indie internet outlets. Plus, the usual swarm of paparazzi abounded. The blogosphere was already alight.

  Many in the crowd recognized Richard right away, came rushing at him, paparazzi in the forefront, as always, scurrying like cockroaches, peppering him with questions, both serious and inane, snapping endless streams of photos of the photogenic Richard—Angela hadn’t fully appreciated just how handsome Richard was until this moment. And there she was at his side, too stunned by the entire force of the media assault to realize the danger to herself.

  “God damn it,” Richard raged, “Kieros has gone and created his own media storm.”

  “He must have broken through into the tomb without us,” Angela said.

  And then Richard’s cell phone rang, and as he took the call, as he turned to stone, his face ashen, Angela repeated with more and more urgency, “What is it? What’s happened?”

  He sat down heavily in the spot where he had been standing. The media vultures, instantly sensing blood, crowded around, elbowing each other out of the way, clicking and shouting frantically. Angela, standing over him, hands gripping his shoulders, bared her teeth at them with such ferocity the ones facing her had no choice but to take a step back. Bickering, shouted epithets, and fights broke out as the vultures, flapping their wings, stumbled over one another.

  So came the end, not in any way, shape, or form she ever could have envisioned. Their life here, sudden and transformational, had been shattered. In its place: sorrow, regret, responsibility, uncounted forks in the road.

  THE RETURN

  FOURTEEN

  Jimmy Self sat behind his big oak desk, chewing on a wad of Juicy Fruit well past its sell-by date, but then Jimmy himself was well past his sell-by date. Dreaming of the cigars he used to smoke and wishing he were somewhere else—anywhere other than here. On the desktop: an ancient computer monitor, a stack of files covered in gray dust, a spiderweb glistening off one corner, a Police .38 Special. His rattletrap office, as much a relic of another time as Jimmy Self, stank of stale sweat, cigar smoke, and desperation. The office was lodged in a forgotten building in one of the last derelict streets of New York City. Layer upon layer—as if it were a tree, each ring silent witness to a life lived large, small, and all stages in between—the office, walls smudged the color of the grimy window, appeared nearly as exhausted as he was.

  Once upon a time, he would put his feet up on his desk, blow blue Cuban cigar smoke at the ceiling, and call the shots for his well-heeled clients. Jimmy Self was one of those rare people blind to the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong. He had been given early retirement from the NYPD, a very generous one, indeed. This had been acrimoniously negotiated because Jimmy Self and his bosses were at a stalemate. To put it in its simplest terms, Jimmy Self was a dirty cop. Filthy as the gutters of the Bowery. If they had indicted him for all manner of sketchy dealings, it would have implicated colleagues both upstairs and in Internal Affairs. After a three-week vacation in Grand Cayman, he had returned to the city and advertised his PI business.

  Immediately, his life had become all the sketchier, especially once he’d been hired by Byron Dey. Had he been born in an earlier era, Dey might very well have forged a bloody road for himself. But times had changed radically. The old ways were dead and buried. Dey had earned an MBA from Penn and, directly out of grad school, had used seed money from a close group of friends to found a business built on the ashes of carefully selected companies on the verge of bankruptcy. He’d fire all but a core group of employees, resuscitate the company, and then sell it for an enviable profit. He gave not a single thought to the thousands who lost their jobs and were thrown into poverty. His business grew exponentially, and yet he wasn’t satisfied; he required a new world to conquer. He parted company with his group, buying them out at top dollar. Everyone was satisfied, especially Dey.

  MBA and business acumen notwithstanding, Dey was plenty rough around the edges. He had a bad temper that could flare like Mount Etna at a moment’s notice. He had already gone dark; now shed of his original backers, he went darker. With vicious cunning and strategic power grabs, he sealed worldwide alliances with the Albanians, the Mexicans, the Colombians, and the Russians—arms dealers and cocaine smugglers all. He thus realized the walloping gains inherent in outsourcing. Hence his hiring of Jimmy Self rather than using any of his own people.

  That had been four years ago, four long ugly years since the morning Jimmy had first met Bryon Dey down by the Brooklyn docks.

  Jimmy Self would never forget the image of Dey, in his stylish chalk-striped suit, glowering at Jimmy.

  “I mean, come on, Self. I watched The Godfather and The Sopranos same as you. I know what button men were. I never in my life thought I’d need one. But now . . .” His shoulders lifted and fell. That damn suit fit him so perfectly it made Jimmy Self feel li
ke a schlemiel. His cheeks were pink and newly shaved, his neatly parted hair as gray and stippled as the sky. Dey’s steely eyes fixed on Jimmy Self’s face. “Now I do.”

  Dey handed over a file and a ziplock bag of cash. The sky, piled high with clouds, seemed to lower itself onto Jimmy Self’s shoulders.

  “I want you to find a girl,” Dey said.

  “A girl?”

  “Is that going to be a problem?”

  Jimmy Self opened the file, stared down at a snapshot of a very pretty girl: oval face, large light eyes, sensual lips. “She’s still got baby fat on her.”

  “Her tender age failed to stop her from stealing me blind.”

  A tugboat hooted as it passed a barge hauling a mountain of garbage, headed out of state. The waterfront had the melancholy air of a cemetery.

  “In any event,” Dey continued, “she’s over the legal limit.”

  “Must be just,” Jimmy Self opined. Then, beneath the gaze of those hawkish eyes, “Anyways, what happened?”

  “It’s all in there,” Dey said, his voice now easy and light. “She worked for me. Frankly, and this pains me to admit it, she was the best business manager I ever had.”

  “At her age?”

  “It happens, Self. Not often, but in this case . . . keep to the ratty shadows, the places you know. She’s a goddamned prodigy. The truth is she made me a ton of money. I mean literally a ton. And she made sure the government knew nothing. Then she lit out with it. Took my IT people, such as they are, two weeks to break into her electronic books, and they’re still unraveling the spaghetti she left behind. Her work’s left them in the dust.”

  Across the river, dark waves lapped at eighteenth-century pilings, all that was left of the world-class piers. A Circle Line boat slid by, crammed with tourists, backs to the two men, snapping photos and selfies of the angular glass skyline of Lower Manhattan. Tourists neither knew nor cared about Brooklyn.