The Moonlit Earth

by Christopher Rice

  Where was her denial? What had become of all the queer mental tricks her mind could have used to protect herself had she been told this story on dry land, in a country she was familiar with? They were all gone. She believed every word of the story the young man had just told her, because her brother had lived and breathed inside of it. Every detail Aabid had shared about him, every description, every recitation of the words Cameron had spoken had been utterly convincing, entirely accurate. And the only thing that muffled the dreadful shock that had come at the end—was it the end?—was the sense of having just been closer to Cameron than she had been in days.

  But every other detail about the story had made sense to her as well, right down to her mother’s drug-fueled, time-traveling babble; Megan had seen this firsthand when she had tried to get her mom out of the safe house. And the strange, nagging detail of Cameron asking to use his father’s storage unit. And his desperate, poorly assembled lie about why he was back in touch with their father. All of it came into focus. All of it now made sense.

  Aabid offered her a drink, but she refused. At one point, she felt his hand on her shoulder, but she must have gone rigid under his touch because he withdrew. She could feel his presence nearby, and she was aware that she was staring down at the mess of scattered fashion magazines on the table. But everything around her seemed to be losing texture.

  She knew what she was doing. She was trying to force herself to go into some kind of shock so she wouldn’t feel the first strike from the realization that was rising from deep beneath the surface like some leviathan. She had the truth, but she had lost something to get it.

  They had nothing on Zach Holder.

  Cameron knew nothing about the man or his plot. Holder’s phone call to Lucas had been made after the charter flight, after Cameron had made a commitment of his own to meet Aabid in Phuket. And if Cameron’s mission had been to acquire blackmail information on Aabid, why had he refused to sleep with him? Why had he challenged him and antagonized him and done everything he could to parent him? And then there were the details about the female flight attendant from the ad, the way she had practically thrown herself at Aabid. She was the one Holder had positioned to get in bed with Aabid; then she had stood back, helpless, as Aabid went after Cameron. Had she reported these findings to her boss? That would explain Holder’s sudden phone call to Lucas to inquire about Cameron’s loyalty. They hadn’t known that Aabid Al-Farhan was gay.

  Megan hadn’t just come up with a theory to guide her; she had fallen prey to a fantasy. A fantasy that Cameron was in possession of some secret information that could have stopped the terrible force that was Zach Holder. In a quieter moment, maybe she could have convinced herself that a little fantasy never hurt anyone, especially if it made it easier for you to do good things for good people, to go the distance when you were ready to give up.

  But where had this fantasy gotten her? She was adrift on the other side of the world from home, forced to accept the knowledge that home was where this nightmare had truly begun.

  Aabid set a drink in front of her, a swirl of dark liquid with two ice cubes. She made no move to touch it. Just a small sip would have tipped her nausea past the breaking point. When it became clear she wanted nothing to do with Aabid’s offering, he crossed to a nearby telephone, dialed a number, and muttered a few words in Arabic.

  Less than a minute later, Majed was standing before them, eyes wide, jaw tense, but he stayed focused on his boss, who was staring at Megan. Aabid appeared more adult than he had since she had boarded the yacht. Maybe that was because fear had left him, and pity always made one appear more grown-up.

  But she couldn’t look into his eyes. She knew what was coming. Would Aabid take pride in Megan’s terrible error?

  Finally, Aabid said, “I thank you, Majed, for bringing Megan to see me. There has been much valuable information exchanged tonight.”

  She waited for him to make his revelation, but he did not, and when she looked up into his eyes again, she saw him studying her. Then, he looked to Majed and said, “We shall meet with my father.” At first Megan was so startled by the fact that Aabid had not shared her family secret, she didn’t grasp the full implications of this announcement. “We shall arrange for a meeting with him and he will tell us what it is that we will do.” To Megan he said, “Then, once we have his direction, we shall get your brother. It has been foolish of me not to do this sooner. So this is what we will do, yes?”

  Megan waited for Majed to break the silence, but the man simply nodded at the floor and kept his hands crossed behind his back, and before she could catch her breath, Aabid said, “Take her to the media room and make sure she is comfortable. I will make the call.”

  Aabid departed, and Majed advanced on her. He guided her through the expansive dining room, then down a small corridor with doors to a guest suite and a bathroom, past the central circular staircase and into the cabin closest to the bow, a smaller version of the sitting area they had just come from, with a larger flat-screen television on one wall.

  When he pulled the door shut behind them, the words came tearing out of her. “You have to tell him, Majed. If his father wanted you dead, what do you think he’ll do to Cameron?”

  “Stay in this room. Don’t leave until I come for you.”

  “Tell him, Majed!”

  “It will serve no purpose. He will not hear it, and if he does, then you are betting that he will care. There is nothing more important to a Saudi man than family. Nothing. Put your brother up against that and he will lose. The father’s law is always law.”

  “Not for you.”

  “Yes, not for me. But perhaps if my father had allowed me to live like a prince, I would be just as difficult to convince as Aabid will be if you say anything to him of this.”

  “You have to give him more credit than this. Cameron was … changing him. He was making him think about things in a new way.”

  “Cameron is not here!” Majed snapped. “And if you ever want to see him again, you must listen to me.” When he saw he had shocked her silent, he continued, “He off-loaded most of the crew at some point after the bombing. The first and second officer, the two stewards, they’re all gone. But I don’t know where they went. The captain is locked inside the wheelhouse and he hasn’t come out. But one of the guards is missing. That guard has to be with Cameron.”

  “OK …”

  “The yacht has a GPS system with a computer memory. It will have their route for the last two days stored on it somewhere, everywhere they have stopped. The captain told me this weeks ago.”

  “And if they’ve erased it?”

  “Nothing is ever truly erased on a computer drive,” Majed said. “If you get it into the right hands, with the right people, they will be able to recover it. I am sure of this.”

  “So we’re just going to take it and go?”

  “I will take care of it.”

  “How?”

  “Do not ask a question you don’t want an answer to.”

  “No. No killing. You can’t—”

  “I broke the lock on the weapons locker. It’ll take them hours to get it open. Ali is the only other armed man on board and I will handle him. I’m going to disable the yacht so they can’t follow us. They have enough supplies to last them for another day or two, but then they will have to call for help, which is the last thing Aabid or his father will want. And by then, you will have your brother back, and I will have what I need.”

  “What you need …”

  “Yes.”

  “On Zach Holder.”

  “Yes.”

  He was humoring her. Maybe he thought she was in shock. He didn’t seem to hear the undertone of guilt in her voice. But he was still standing in front of her, waiting for her to give him some kind of permission to commence his insane plan. Of course it was still a desire for revenge that drove him. And hadn’t she promised to fulfill it for him? She had assured him her brother had information on Holder that would knock the man a
few rungs down the ladder, make him easier for Majed to get to. Where had these words even come from? Desperation. The same level of desperation she was feeling now.

  What had Majed just said to her? If she put her brother up against the bonds of a Saudi family, she would lose. Would Majed be as cavalier if he were in her shoes? If she chose to bet on the truth against Majed’s desire for revenge, who would come out the winner?

  How quickly the rationalizations came, one right after the other, with a speed and efficiency that could have produced a lifetime of lies. Suddenly the man before her was not good enough, not smart enough, not pure of heart enough to justify telling him the entire tale. And look at all he had done! He had moved the bomb to begin with. He had refused to turn himself in to the authorities. He had tried to trick her into believing he was her brother. Like fine silt, these rationalizations settled across her soul. If this stranger—and he was, after all, a stranger, wasn’t he?—and his thirst for revenge were all that could get her brother back, then so be it. All the purported gods of the universe could find a way to forgive her for this, couldn’t they?

  “Do not leave this room,” he said. He extended his hand to her, but it wasn’t clear if he was trying to hold her in place, or if he had meant to touch her, to comfort her.

  She watched him slip out of the door he had only opened halfway. Her mouth was open, but she said nothing. Yes, he had saved her life, but would he have had to if he had not tricked her into coming halfway across the world, if he had not pretended to be her brother?

  I can’t, she thought. It was the one clear thought that emerged from the riot of voices in her head, voices that all sounded like her own but at various pitches, voices that were shouting answers over questions. I can’t. If she stayed silent, this ceaseless, furious argument would continue in her head for years to come. This she could not live with. So maybe it wasn’t selflessness that propelled her forward, out of the room she had just promised not to leave. Maybe she had fallen prey to her unwillingness to live with the pain of a necessary omission, and maybe some people could call that weakness, or a lack of courage.

  But no matter what came of this moment, regardless of whether or not Cameron was returned to her or Majed was felled by gunfire, she would be left with only what she chose to do over the next minute. And her choice would be the only thing she would ever truly own; no one could give it to her and no one could take it from her. If the truth could not rescue them, then there was no rescue at all.

  “Majed!”

  He froze, several steps from the sliding door to the back deck. He had already pulled the gun that had killed Lucas from the waistband of his jeans. When Megan struggled for her next words, Majed started for her across the carpet, pointing back at the media room with one hand.

  “Cameron doesn’t know anything,” she said. “About Holder. He doesn’t have anything on him.” As the story Aabid had just told her came pouring out of her, Majed set the gun down on the dining room table and took a seat in one of the high-backed upholstered chairs. By the time she was finished, he was leaning forward, elbows on his knees and his hands clasped. The look he gave her was one of intense fascination.

  “Why have you told me this?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t make you risk your life for a lie.”

  “Was it a lie?”

  “You didn’t have all the information.”

  “And why would I need all the information?” He sounded winded and defeated. His plan had filled him with aggressive energy, and now that it had been taken from him, exhaustion seemed to be taking hold.

  “So you could make a choice,” she said.

  A wry smile bent his lips and for a while he just nodded as he gazed into space. “The last time I made a choice sixty people died.”

  “You didn’t have all the information then either. You didn’t know what you held in your hands.”

  “And now?” he asked. “Now what do I hold in my hands, Megan Reynolds? Besides a gun.”

  “Come with me,” she said. “Help me tell him the truth. He’ll do whatever he does with it. But at least we’ll know we gave him a chance neither one of us got.”

  For several minutes, Majed studied her and she allowed herself to be studied, holding her ground, holding his stare. “You have faith in him,” Majed finally said. “You would not risk your brother’s life like this if you did not have faith in him. What an amazing story he must have told you.”

  “It wasn’t just a story.”

  “I see,” he whispered, but he didn’t sound convinced. He got to his feet and stared down at the gun as if it were a half-empty dinner plate and he didn’t know if the person who had left it behind had finished eating. “And so this is how I repay Ali for allowing me to live? By betraying his trust?”

  “Perhaps Ali will come off as a disloyal employee,” Megan said. “But only if Aabid wants you dead as much as his father did. And if that was true, why did Ali lie to him about why you left?”

  Majed got to his feet. “Let us go then. Let us give something else to the little boy who has been given everything. Let us help him add another precious gift to his yacht and his fine clothes and his seas of money. Let us give him a choice.”

  She followed him down the short corridor to the central staircase, up one flight of the circular staircase with its thick salmon-colored carpeting. The door to the wheelhouse was closed but there was no guard standing outside the door to the master’s suite. Where was Ali? Majed breezed right in as if they had come to deliver laundry. All of the lights in the room had been dimmed to near-darkness; the deck door was open so Aabid could enjoy the view.

  He had changed out of his golden robe and into jeans and a T-shirt. Surely it would be hours before Yousef Al-Farhan could meet them. But simply speaking of the possibility had caused Aabid to change into a more masculine outfit and tie his hair back into a ponytail.

  Aabid studied them for a few seconds, then he began speaking to Majed in Arabic. Was he chastising him for not keeping her confined to the media room?

  Megan cut him off. “Have you made the call?”

  “I tried,” he said, but he was still eyeing Majed warily. “I couldn’t get a signal. But in another few minutes I should—”

  “Ali lied to you,” Megan said. “About why Majed left the boat.”

  Aabid’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. Now it was clear he kept looking to Majed because he knew Megan was about to tell him something he would not want to hear.

  “As soon as the security tape made the news, your father ordered Ali to kill Majed.”

  He did not cry out. He did not throw his hands in the air. He did not even move. He had been so volatile and full of emotion down below, she didn’t think him capable of this kind of paralyzed shock. In Arabic, he whispered to Majed. Majed whispered back—the words sounded like a confirmation.

  “Ali couldn’t do it,” Megan continued. “He let Majed go instead.”

  “You are punishing me,” Aabid whispered.

  “That’s not true. I’m—”

  “You are punishing me for telling you the truth about your family. This is not acceptable for you … for you to do this. You cannot say these things to me. You cannot …”

  “No, Aabid, listen to me. If you care about Cameron at all, you can’t involve your father in this. If he was ready to kill Majed over that tape, think of what he’ll do—”

  “Liar!” he roared. The next thing she knew, Majed was holding Aabid back with an arm curved around his chest as the young man struggled to get free. It looked like he was ready to tear Megan’s eyes out. But his socked feet slipped on the carpet, and Majed managed to grab his swinging right arm and pin it behind his back as he hauled him farther toward the deck door.

  “You try to take my father from me with lies, and you will not! You cannot!” But these words were lost to a stream of Arabic, which was in turn lost to sputtering tears as Majed managed to seize the boy by both shoulders and drive him ass first into a nearby chair.


  After a few minutes of rocking back and forth against Majed’s grip, Aabid managed to get his breath back, but when he spoke again, his words still sounded contorted with pain. “You and your brother are the same. You try to take everything from me in the name of … what? What is it you want from me? Why do you want to see me stripped of everything I value?”

  Megan knew better than to answer. Majed had lifted his head slightly to avoid the spray from Aabid’s mouth, but he was still pressing Aabid against the back of the chair by both shoulders. “Without my family I am nothing. Nothing!”

  Megan said, “Get Ali up here.”

  Majed shot her a furious look; this was further than he was willing to go.

  “Do it, Majed.”

  Majed released Aabid’s shoulders. But instead of leaving the master suite, he crossed to the corded phone next to the bed and dialed. As he punched numbers, Megan began to close the distance between her and Aabid. When he sensed her getting close, the young man lifted his head and tried to meet her look.

  “You don’t have to believe me,” she finally said. “Just take me to my brother and let us go.”

  “So you can spread lies about my family all over the world?”

  “Like it will matter. Once you’re back inside Saudi Arabia, no one will be able to touch you. Your father sits at the right hand of one of the most powerful princes in the Kingdom. You’ll be good as gold once you’re home. And that is what you want, isn’t it? To go home. Isn’t that why your family is so important to you?”

  Of course it wasn’t what he wanted. If it was, he would already be in Saudi Arabia, or more than halfway there. Cameron had offered him a taste of various fruits that did not grow from parched desert earth, and he had become addicted—one of the many truths his story had made clear. She was baiting him, and trying to scare him out of arranging a meeting with his father, but she couldn’t tell if it was working.