The Moonlit Earth

by Christopher Rice

  “It has everything to do with you.”

  “Why do you say this? Because I did not abandon them?”

  “No,” she said. “Because Cameron discovered a plot to blackmail your family and he threatened to go public with it. That’s why someone planted a bomb in his hotel room. So they could make him out to be a terrorist before he went public.”

  Aabid hit the sofa cushions like a sack of wet cement. His hands went to his face as if it were about to slip free of his skull. His chest was rising and falling with enough force for its motions to be visible under the folds of his golden robe.

  Majed was glaring at her. Of course he was. She’d given him no indication that her information involved the Al-Farhan family directly. Maybe he wouldn’t have escorted her here if he had known. She was past the point of caring. The fact that a child was behind all of this—a spoiled, self-indulgent, drunken little child—infuriated her. And the idea that this child would somehow paint himself as Cameron’s savior turned that fury into a force powerful enough to drown out fear and wash away exhaustion.

  But as silence settled over the room, interrupted only by Aabid’s rapid breaths against his sweaty palms, she realized what she had also done. She had left out the fact that Majed had moved the bomb. Could that be why he nodded slightly and looked to the floor? Was he grateful to her and trying not to show it?

  “Don’t you understand? If you let Cameron go, he can tell the authorities what he knows about the people responsible for this. He can end this. But every day you hold on to him, you prevent him from doing that.” Aabid was still staring into space, his hands covering his mouth and nose. “Let me take him with me and you can go wherever you need to go. But for Christ’s sake, enough of this game. Let him go!”

  Aabid lowered his hands to his lap, but his expression was a pained grimace and he began balling his robe in his fists with the same compulsive determination with which he had torn perfume ads from fashion magazines.

  “Who is behind this plot?” Aabid asked, in a trembling whisper.

  “Did you meet my brother on a charter flight? A flight from Los Angeles to Riyadh that used a Peninsula Airlines plane? A triple-seven?” He nodded, his eyes glazed, as if he were suddenly lost in the memory of the meeting itself. Megan continued, “After that flight, Zach Holder called my cousin Lucas. Lucas is—”

  “Your brother has told me of Lucas,” Aabid said quietly.

  “Lucas managed Holder’s money. Lucas got Cameron the job at Peninsula Airlines with Holder. But that day, when Holder called him, he wanted to offer Cameron another job. A job that would require discretion and—”

  “After the flight?” Aabid asked. “Holder called your cousin after the flight?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  This seemed to be the answer he was hoping for, because he took a deep breath and gestured for her to continue.

  “Lucas believed that Zach Holder was planning to blackmail you.” Aabid’s breath left him in one long pained exhalation. Not only did the Prince find this theory to be imminently plausible, it seemed to carry a truth that pressed the very breath out of him. There was no apparent need to go into Holder’s long tortured history of being bled dry by the Al-Farhan family.

  Behind her, Majed was struggling to maintain his composure. His expression was blank, but he had taken a seat in the nearest chair and he was sitting forward with his elbows on his knees, rocking back and forth slightly with contained aggression. It was clear he had no trouble believing this either.

  “He has tired of us, has he?” Aabid finally said. “After all my father has provided for him, he has tired of us? Perhaps there are different parts of our Kingdom he would like to rape.”

  Megan assumed these questions were rhetorical and for several minutes, Aabid didn’t rouse himself from his trancelike state to tell her otherwise.

  “How did he do it?” Aabid asked.

  “Do what?”

  “How did Cameron threaten the great Zach Holder?”

  “He went through Lucas.”

  “How?”

  “Cameron called Lucas and said, ‘Tell her everything or I will.’” At these words, Aabid stared up at her with a furrowed brow, as if she had suddenly started to speak a language he did not understand. Maybe he was just waiting for her to say more. And there was more; she had forgotten Cameron’s next statement. “And he said he had proof. After Cameron hung up on him, Lucas called Holder and told him that Cameron had something on him and he needed to do something about it. That night, the bomb went off.”

  “Who is her?” he asked, and now his expression and his tone of voice seemed to border on irritation.

  “Me.”

  “Why you? Why did he not tell me?”

  “I don’t think he planned on keeping it a secret from you, or from anyone. He had proof, and he planned to use it. But I think he wanted Lucas to tell me before he went public. Lucas was bailing me out, so it makes sense.” Every mention of her cousin’s name sent a searing pain through her. When the feeling passed, she saw that Aabid couldn’t bring himself to look at her. His shock at hearing Zach Holder’s name had put a stop to his theatrics, and now he seemed puzzled and agitated.

  He was glancing nervously in Majed’s direction. Majed appeared as stricken by Aabid’s sudden transformation as she was. After a few minutes, Aabid sputtered a few words in Arabic. At first, Majed acted as if he hadn’t heard. When Aabid began to repeat himself, Majed rose to his feet before the young man could finish saying the words a second time. He pulled the sliding door shut behind him.

  “Sit,” Aabid said.

  Her instinct was to refuse, but there was no real force of authority in his voice. It sounded like a simple request, so she decided to treat it like one.

  “You don’t believe me?” she asked. “Fine. Then let Cameron tell us himself. He has proof. Let him tell us what it is and where it is.”

  He didn’t seem to hear a word she said. For a while, he stared down at the mess of torn magazines between them. He needs time, she told herself. He needs time to absorb all of this. He’s just a child.

  But when he finally managed to look her in the eye, he seemed remarkably composed.

  “I believe everything you have said about Zach Holder. I believe he called your cousin and I believe your cousin was correct about Holder’s … plot.”

  “OK …”

  “But I don’t believe Cameron knew anything about it.” Before she could respond, he started speaking again, and at first she thought he had lapsed into drunken nonsense. Then, as her breath returned, she realized what he was doing. He was telling her a story.

  19

  Los Angeles International Airport

  The tram that carried them across the tarmac had no seats, just steel bars overhead they could hold on to as they lurched along a pathway marked by giant white lines. His father had demanded to drive them up to the giant plane in his limousine, but the two red-suit-clad airport employees had responded to all of Yousef’s explosions with a series of polite refusals, nodding the entire time, the same nod almost every American had greeted them with since they had entered the country two weeks before.

  There were six of them on the tram—if you counted his father’s servant, which most of them did not, and the one airport employee who had been brave enough to accompany them after the limousine fight. But there were enough shopping bags gathered around their legs to accommodate the purchases of a thousand princesses. His younger brothers, Yeslam and Abdel, had spent almost every afternoon of the trip on Rodeo Drive, returning to their hotel rooms with all manner of electronics they had insisted on parading before him while he tried to watch MTV. How he loved MTV! So many beautiful white people ending their relationships in tears and vomiting into trash cans at nightclubs.

  But they had lost a traveler along the way—Bakr, Aabid’s eldest brother. A few hours earlier, they had bid their farewells to him outside his new home, a brick and glass dormitory on the campus of the University
of Southern California. Poor Bakr. He would spent the next year of his life in stuffy classrooms, being whispered about by callous Americans, while Aabid sailed the high seas on their father’s new yacht. Poor Bakr. He would spend his nights listening to the snores of his freckled roommate, a fat-faced boy from Texas who had made secret-sounding phone calls every time the family entered the room. During one of their rides back to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Aabid pointed out this behavior to his father, and the man had snapped, “Perhaps if we dressed like true Arabs we would not frighten him! But with our dark skin and our fancy Western clothes we look like the men who crash their airplanes.” Aabid took this comment to heart. After all, his clothes were the fanciest out of all of them.

  Their father was still complaining about their current mode of transportation, but Aabid was riveted by the scene outside. Enormous jets taxied past them on both sides; the tram was now a tiny fish moving among great whales. The international terminal was off to their right, and through a series of plate glass windows, Aabid could see inside some sort of first-class lounge, where travelers searched for empty seats among the rows of leather chairs.

  After another few minutes, the plane that would carry them home came into view. The fuselage was a deep shade of blue and the words PENINSULA AIRLINES were painted above the windows in white letters trimmed in gold. A rolling staircase had already been placed at the first exit and Aabid could see four uniformed flight attendants standing at the bottom, awaiting their arrival like royal guards.

  There was one male among them. But they were still too far away for their faces to be visible. He was about to push himself to the front of the tram, but there were too many shopping bags in his way. He was confident his father had suspicions about Aabid’s request, but as long as Aabid did not make a spectacle of himself, his father would look the other way.

  Another few yards, then another, and he could see the face of the male flight attendant standing at the bottom of the stairs. It was him! The man from the advertisement; same blond hair, same fine blue eyes, same hard, defiant jaw. With the first rush of desire came the first prickles of shame, and Aabid suddenly found himself looking around the tram to see if anyone had noticed his long look. No one had.

  The tram rolled to a stop. His father turned and handed the driver an envelope stuffed with cash, but when the man went to thank him, his father was already bounding down the steps, tugging a pack of Dunhill Lights from the front pocket of his Armani shirt.

  Aabid tried not to watch the scene that ensued between the airport employee and his father as the poor little man in the red suit tried to keep his father from blowing up the jet-fuel truck several yards away with his cigarette. Instead, Aabid watched the object of desire as he took in the theatrics before him.

  The handsome young man tensed his lips, and clasped his hands in front of his crotch, at first refusing to break his stiff pose. But when Yousef’s proclamations became too fierce and angry for him, the flight attendant didn’t start backing up the steps, as Aabid expected him to. Instead, he walked straight for the tram and began helping their servant unload the suitcases and shopping bags. After a few seconds of bouncing on their heels and picking at their uniforms, the other flight attendants followed suit and within minutes, the entire mass of them, save for Yousef and the airport employee, were moving up the staircase together like a group of Bedouins who had been thrown from their camels, the flight attendants lugging the suitcases, and each of the Al-Farhan children holding several shopping bags in both arms. The handsome flight attendant was at the front of the group. But Aabid couldn’t get close to him. His little brother had not only cut in front of him but had fallen down twice on the way up the steps, screeching with laughter each time.

  When Aabid stepped inside the cabin, he saw one of the flight attendants, an older woman with short mannish hair and a deeply lined face, loading their shopping bags into a storage closet next to the galley.

  The cockpit door was open and one of the men inside said, “You know? You’d think you wouldn’t have to tell a frickin’ Arab that jet fuel is flammable!” When the flight attendant realized what had happened, she abandoned the bags she’d been struggling with and slammed the cockpit door.

  Because he had no interest in whatever apology the flight attendant might have to offer, Aabid turned his back to her. It was about neither the jet fuel nor the cigarette. His father picked these squabbles to show his sons what the Americans truly thought of them. He did it to show his children what was lurking just below the surface of their solicitous nods, their forced smiles, and their offers of more and more and more. Perhaps his father was more belligerent than usual because of Bakr, but not because he was going to miss his eldest son. He simply wanted his younger sons to see that there could be no comfort, no real respect, and no true home for them among the Americans, despite the endless excitement that seemed to await Bakr at university.

  The first-class cabin had eight enormous leather seats, each one contained by a set of sliding, mahogany-trimmed doors that seemed to offer complete privacy until you noticed they didn’t meet the ceiling overhead. So much for executing his plan inside the “private suite” his father had promised him. Standing next to one of the remaining empty seats was the prettiest of the three female flight attendants: olive skin, lustrous mocha-colored hair, and almond-shaped green eyes above a delicate nose. She was the woman from the advertisement and she seemed enormously pleased to see him.

  After he stepped into his leather-padded cocoon, the flight attendant showed him how to adjust the seat, then she advised him that when he was ready to sleep she would transform it into a bed for him. When he only thanked her, she showed him how to use the flat-screen television: it had to be fifteen inches at least and the surface was so reflective he could use it as a mirror. Then she offered him a drink and when he declined, she offered him a snack. And when he declined that, she offered him some pillows. And when he declined the pillows, she gave him a coy smile and offered to show him how to put on his seat belt. When her hands were within inches of his waist, he reached out and seized her left wrist.

  “That is not necessary,” he said, in almost a whisper. Then he met her eyes—the expression on her face seemed frozen between a smile and a grimace—and said, “Not necessary at all.” He noticed the brief flicker of some dark emotion behind her tortured smile—was it anger, or just simple embarrassment? She didn’t linger long enough for him to decipher which one.

  Had she known that he had requested both flight attendants from the advertisement in British Vogue? Had she assumed she was the reason for his special request? Once she was gone, and he was left alone in his leather-padded cocoon, he realized the full implications of her attentions. If she had knowledge of his request, and she saw him pay any amount of attention to her male colleague, she would know his true intentions. All hope of secrecy would be lost.

  In response to this terrible realization, he pulled the sliding doors shut, but it did nothing to blot out the sounds of the cabin; the handsome flight attendant was coaxing Yousef into the first-class cabin, meeting the man’s every harsh word with another tantalizing offer—a drink, a pillow, a blanket. Finally, it sounded as if his father had been subdued.

  But Aabid could not bring himself to engage his target just yet. He had to get his bearings back. To do this, he pulled from his Prada carry-on a bottle of Maker’s Mark he had purloined from the wet bar in his hotel room. Also in his bag was a fat envelope of American dollars. Before they landed, his father would most likely pass out envelopes of cash for each of them to tip the crew with, but Aabid had snuck into his father’s room while he was sleeping and prepared an additional envelope of his own, which he planned on presenting to the flight attendant midway through the flight—a generous payment for a fantasy made reality.

  The bottle of Maker’s wedged between his thighs, Aabid looked around for a glass, but saw that one had not been supplied for him. He was about to drink straight out of the bottle when there was a h
arsh rap against the sliding doors.

  He stashed the bottle in one of the enormous pockets intended for newspapers and magazines, and when he opened the doors, he found himself staring into the same blue eyes he had grazed with the fingers on his left hand while pleasuring himself with his right.

  “Hi there,” the flight attendant said. “Listen, these need to stay open until after we’ve reached cruising altitude.”

  “I would like them to stay closed.”

  “Yes, and I’d like to be able to get to you in case of an emergency.”

  Get to me—those three words sent a shiver down both of his arms, and for a brief, humiliating second, he was afraid he had actually swooned.

  “How about something to drink?”

  “I am fine. Thank you.”

  The flight attendant’s eyes cut past him, to where the top half of the Maker’s Mark bottle was sticking out of the pocket next to the seat. How would it be possible to remind the flight attendant of his true place without ruining his chances?

  “How about I bring you some bottled water?” the flight attendant said. “You don’t want to dehydrate yourself. It’s a long flight.” But the flight attendant didn’t wait for him to say yes or no, he just hurried off down the aisle, but not before giving him a conspiratorial wink that left him struggling for breath.

  Several hours into the flight, Aabid emerged from his suite into the darkened cabin. The doors to all of the occupied suites were closed, but the blue flicker of his father’s TV screen danced on the ceiling overhead. There was so much space in each suite for carry-on luggage that the overhead compartments had been removed, giving a startling sense of height inside the cabin.