The Moonlit Earth

by Christopher Rice

  “So maybe you had the right idea. Maybe if another month had gone by, or two months, there would have been a thousand little expensive details that would have seemed far too important for me to just hop on a plane and travel across the world to find out what happened to my only brother. Maybe I would have stayed here and believed what I was being told. Your timing was just perfect, Cameron.”

  “You should give yourself more credit,” he said.

  “You first.”

  He seemed to consider this for a while.

  “If you spend enough time in the past, everyone turns into a villain,” she said.

  “Maybe so.”

  After a while, his hand found hers and he gripped it.

  “This agent keeps calling me,” he said.

  “What kind of agent?”

  “A literary agent.”

  “Jesus. I thought you meant a CIA agent or something.”

  “No, Megan.”

  “Well, come on. It’s not like it’s a stretch.”

  “A literary agent. From New York. She says publishers are chomping at the bit for my story. I couldn’t publish anything before the trial but she promised me one of them would advance me some money once I signed a contract.”

  “Your story? Does that include Aabid Al-Farhan’s story?”

  “I guess.”

  “Careful.”

  “Why? The world thinks Aabid is dead.”

  “Because that’s what his father wants them to think.”

  “You think he would come after me? You don’t really believe he tried to kill anyone, do you?”

  “Are you asking for my permission?”

  “Actually, I was asking how you might like to use the advance money. The housing market in San Francisco is actually pretty reasonable right now. Maybe, depending on how much they offer me, you and I might find a nice place, or two nice places or … something, I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “A book, huh?”

  “It scares you?”

  “Some.”

  “Well, they’re asking for my story, and I’ve never met Zach Holder so I’ll leave him out, I guess.”

  “A book …”

  “San Francisco, Megan.” He let these words sink in by themselves, then he added, “I’ve never been a huge fan, but maybe I’ll learn to appreciate it with you.”

  “It’s a great city.”

  “Prove it,” he said.

  He got to his feet, and extended one hand. “Come on. Let’s go see Mom.”

  Without any more words that might endanger this sudden fragile truce, she took his hand and got to her feet, and together they made their way up the wooden set of stairs that led to the sidewalk on Sand Dollar Avenue.

  Before they reached the top, Megan was overcome by the sense that this would be the last time she would ever see the cove. The small body of water had suspended her between childhood and adulthood in the hour before her life changed forever, but she still didn’t have the slightest idea how to say good-bye. So she contented herself with one last look, and took comfort in the knowledge that it was always easy to visit a grave because they were rarely moved.

  Epilogue

  San Francisco

  Megan had fifteen minutes before she was supposed to meet Cameron in Washington Square, so she decided to duck into a little coffee place across from the park to get herself something cold to drink.

  The broad lawn in front of Saints Peter and Paul Church was dappled with sunbathers, and the white stone of the cathedral’s ornate slender towers had a ferocious radiance in the afternoon sun. Most of the Italian restaurants along Columbus Avenue had their windows open onto the street, and the waiters tending to the sidewalk tables had shed their usual white button-downs in lieu of tank tops and T-shirts. For weeks now, San Francisco had been in the grip of an unseasonable heat wave that had stoked the usual near-hysterical talk of global climate change. Cameron had taken to inquiring after the fog as if it were a secret lover of Megan’s that she wasn’t ready for him to meet.

  But there was little doubt her brother was falling in love with the place. He spent every weekday afternoon at the North Beach apartment of the ghostwriter his publisher had hooked him up with, a boisterous Southern-born gay man with a great shock of dirty blond hair who regaled him with entertaining stories about the decadent celebrities whose memoirs and romans à clef he had penned. Obviously the man was trying to win Cameron’s friendship before drawing the more painful moments of his experience out of him. But the afternoons at his apartment had done more to buoy Cameron’s spirits than the move itself, so Megan kept her opinions to herself.

  She had just come from lunch with her old friend Mara, a former classmate from Berkeley who had opened an experimental elementary school in the Castro District where the students called their teachers by their first names and camping trips to various national parks were more frequent occurrences than exams. The school sounded a little too out there for Megan’s taste, but like so many of her college friends, Mara was trying to help her find some work. The advance from Cameron’s book contract was enough for them to live comfortably on for at least a year, but Megan was eager for somewhere to park her head during the day, as anyone who knew her well enough could tell after just a minute or two of watching her fiddle with her silverware at the lunch table.

  She had just given her order to the blue-haired skater kid behind the cash register, when someone brushed up against her back with enough force to send her forward onto her toes. For a second she thought it was Cameron trying to surprise her. But when she turned around, there was no one in the coffeehouse’s open front door, and the only other customer inside the place was a heavy-set woman with a gray ponytail who was emptying sugar packets into her latte with the care of a spinal surgeon.

  As the skater kid delivered her iced coffee, she looked down and saw what she thought was a business card resting on the counter in front of her. She accepted her drink in one hand and picked up the card in the other. When she saw what was written on it, she turned it over, read the message on the back, and shoved it into her back pocket.

  It was a key card from the Nordham Hotel, and on the back, someone had written in black Sharpie, Meet me in the men’s room. Her next instinct surprised her, but she responded to it anyway. As she followed the signs for the restroom, she pulled out her cell phone and sent her brother a text message. Stay where you are. If you’re in the park, leave right now. She was pretty sure she knew exactly who was waiting for her in the bathroom, but she also knew that given her situation she should be more cautious. She should be more afraid.

  The door to the men’s room was locked. After a single, light knock, it opened by about a centimeter and she pressed gently against it with one hand. Majed was standing in front of the single toilet, as if he were trying to block it from her view. His baseball cap and baggy T-shirt made him a dead ringer for the man who had rescued her in Hong Kong, save for the new fat along his jaw and in his lips. He had altered his facial appearance with either implants or a needleful of collagen, she couldn’t tell which. When he took off his sunglasses, he revealed evidence of a dramatic face-lift that had altered the angle of his eye sockets, giving him a perpetually sad, puppy-dog expression.

  “That’s some work you’ve had done there,” she finally said.

  “I did not do it to attract the ladies.”

  “I wouldn’t think a security guard’s salary would pay for something like that.”

  “A security guard? Is that all I am good for in your eyes?”

  When she responded with only a wry smile, Majed said, “Aabid sends his best wishes.”

  “I see,” she said. “Well, obviously his father never wanted you dead. Otherwise you wouldn’t be standing here.”

  “Yousef Al-Farhan is not the man he appears to be on television.”

  “So he’s lying? He knows Aabid is alive. And he knows exactly where he is.” Majed answered by studying the floor between them. “And he knows where y
ou are because you’re working for him.” No response. “So what is this? Are you on vacation, or did he just send you to give his best wishes?”

  “Tell me about this Matthew Ellis,” he said. “The man I am reading about in the newspapers. They say he was the one in charge of Broman Hyde.”

  “They’re trying to make him turn on Holder.”

  “But he is not doing this?”

  “It doesn’t look like it, no. What have you been doing?”

  “I have been traveling a great deal.”

  “You love travel as much as Cameron does.”

  “Yes. But it appears he has settled down some.”

  “You’ve been following us?”

  “If Matthew Ellis does not turn on Holder, this means …”

  “I might have to testify.”

  “I see.”

  “There wouldn’t be a trial at all if it wasn’t for you.”

  “How so?”

  “If you hadn’t moved the bomb, this Mr. Green character probably would have been killed by the explosion. He would have been right next door to it. Everyone thinks that was their plan, anyway. It’s his testimony that’s going to bring everyone down.”

  “And yet you are the one who will have to go to trial. Not me.”

  “You could change that right now if you wanted to.”

  “Your brother knows nothing of Holder’s involvement, but your cousin told you the whole story. You are not afraid?”

  “Should I be?”

  He curled a finger at her, then he turned his back to her. The small frosted window above the toilet was open halfway to account for the lack of air-conditioning, and when she took up a post next to him, she had a view of the park across the street.

  “Where is your brother?” he asked.

  For the first time since picking up the key card, her heart rate stuttered. “I told him to stay where he is.”

  “Good,” he answered. “See the bench, about twenty yards from the sidewalk. Close to where the children are throwing the football.”

  “Yes.”

  Seated on the bench was a broad-shouldered man in sunglasses and a baseball cap and a lightweight khaki safari jacket over his T-shirt that was still too heavy for the heat.

  “Do you recognize him?”

  She didn’t, so she tried to focus on him with more intensity. Olive skin, a dimpled chin. Baby-fat-padded cheeks. Ali. Her breath left her, but in the same moment, she saw that his weight was shifted unnaturally to one side, as if he were dozing behind his glasses.

  Majed said, “You and your brother meet here most afternoons, yes? On some days you must pick another park. People who have been through what you have been through must avoid routine. This is essential.”

  None of the people within spitting distance of the bench she was studying—the kids playing catch, the hippie guitar player, or the workout freak concluding his run with a frenzied series of push-ups—seemed to have noticed what she had just noticed, a dark spreading pool on the concrete underneath the man who appeared to be sleeping.

  “There is information I must give you,” he said. The only way to keep from losing her composure was to turn her back to him and support herself against the sink basin. Undeterred, he continued, “After he was questioned, Zach Holder boarded a Gulfstream and flew to Switzerland. He has, like so many others, much money there in accounts no one can trace. He also owns property there under different names. One of those properties is a beautiful stone house on an island in the middle of a lake. A lake surrounded by mountains. They are beautiful mountains. Even now, he is a man capable of surrounding himself with great beauty. But that is what it means to be rich. And he is still very rich, is he not?”

  She splashed cold water on her face, blotted herself with a paper towel, and turned to face him. “You’ve seen this place?”

  “He has several guards, but they are not the best. He had the best at one time but they have all been charged with terrible crimes. I would say there are three guards. Perhaps four at night.”

  “So you’re an assassin now? Is that it? You’re Yousef Al-Farhan’s assassin?”

  “I am not speaking to Yousef Al-Farhan. I am speaking to you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you told me the truth when you did not have to, even though it hurt your chances of finding your brother. You told me the truth about what he did not know. This I will never forget.”

  Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it free, saw Cameron’s response to her text message. What’s going on?

  “It’s Cameron,” she said. “Was he alone? Ali, I mean. Did he come with—”

  “He was alone.”

  “What should I tell him to do? Is it safe to go home?”

  “It is safe.”

  She wrote back. I’ll meet you at home. Then she pocketed the phone before his response could distract her.

  “The information, Megan.”

  “About Holder? What about it?”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “You don’t work for me, Majed.”

  “You chose not to live in protective custody. Look outside. You know how much danger you will be in if you testify against him. And you know exactly what it is I am asking of you.”

  “Of course I know,” she said. “But what if they never charge him? What if they give up and realize they can’t get him on anything?”

  “What if?”

  “And what if Lucas was lying? They haven’t been able to turn up one piece of concrete proof of the story he told me. Maybe he made it up. Maybe he was more involved than he let on. I don’t know, Majed. And that’s the point. I don’t know enough to give you an answer to what you’re asking me.”

  “You know the risk to you.”

  “Sure. But that’s only one question. And if I were going to tell you to take another person’s life, I would have to know the answer to every question with absolute certainty. I would have to be God. So there’s your answer, OK? No. Don’t do it for me. I can’t ask that of you. I’ll go into protective custody first. I’ll do whatever I have to do. But I won’t tell you to kill anyone.”

  “You must always remember this,” he said. “Remember that when I gave you a choice, you did not choose murder.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I killed him five days ago.” Before her anger at having been manipulated could form itself into words, he closed the distance between them and placed a hand on her shoulder. Was it his way of silencing her, or was he genuinely afraid she might be on the verge of collapse? He said, “I know what it means to have someone dip your hands in blood during a weak moment. But for you, I wish for something more. So if his body ever rises to the surface of that cold, beautiful lake, remember what you chose in this moment and rejoice in your new freedom, without one moment of remorse.”

  She blinked back tears, and saw he was still studying her. It was impossible to tell if there was real sympathy in his eyes, or if she was seeing the effects of his cosmetic surgery. “You are a good person, Megan Reynolds. But you deserve more than your goodness can get you.”

  “You’re here because I told you the truth when I didn’t have to,” she said. “I’m no saint, but maybe my goodness is worth more than you think.”

  His strained, indulgent smile told her he would never be swayed on this final point. Then he was gone, and she was left alone with the cold press of the sink basin against her lower back and the traffic sounds drifting through the open window above the toilet. But it was the piercing wail of a siren that jerked her out of her daze.

  When she emerged onto the sidewalk, two police cruisers pulled to a stop across the street, and she saw a uniformed patrol cop steering a gathering crowd of people away from the bench on which Ali sat at an unnatural angle. Because San Francisco was not New York, pedestrians did not keep walking as if it were just another noisy, cop-ridden day in the big city. They were gathering in knots all down the sidewalk. They were wondering aloud what kind of event co
uld draw this racket into the shadow of a beautiful cathedral, shining in the sun. The park had been full of children moments before the cops arrived and Megan could hear people all around her sharing their fears that one of them was hurt. Or abducted. Or worse.

  Even though this evident, sudden outpouring of concern was an unexpected comfort to her, she turned and walked away, putting as much distance between her and the park as possible before she pulled out her cell phone. Just as she had expected, there was a text message from Cameron.

  You’re scaring me. Is everything all right?

  She paused only a moment to compose her response. I’ll be home soon. Half a block later, she was seized by the vision of her brother pacing the apartment in a cold sweat, tearing at his hair. So she stopped and sent him the message he deserved.

  Don’t be scared. We’re going to be OK.

  Acknowledgments

  Seven years ago, I planned to set my second novel in Asia. But my father was diagnosed with a brain tumor soon after I made my travel plans, so I had no choice but to shift direction. Sue Tebbe, Sandra Hughes, and my mother, Anne Rice, allowed me to revisit that dream by making my research trip to Hong Kong and Thailand possible.

  On the ground in Hong Kong, I’m deeply indebted to Marco Foehn, a man whom the phrase tour guide does not do justice. Anyone who wants to scratch the surface of Hong Kong should spend some time walking it with Marco. (Look him up at www.walkhongkong.com.) Hong Kong residents Paul Schulte and Marshall Moore also provided important guidance.

  Writer Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla gave my depictions of Islam and Saudi Arabia a thorough and sensitive read and alerted me to any false notes. There’s a treasure trove of reading material on Saudi Arabia out there, but the book that impacted me the most was Saudi Arabia Exposed by John R. Bradley. The May 2007 edition of The Atlantic included an article by Nadya Labi called “The Kingdom in the Closet,” which has become definitive reading on the subject of homosexuality in the Middle East.