“From a practical standpoint, Numbers One and Two can be met. Those political prisoners could be released without any threat to the public or great uproar. They’re not members of a conspiracy or anything. They have a wide range—from a trio involved in arson during a civil rights demonstration back in the Sixties to a pathetic character who threw a homemade bomb on the lawn of the White House. The bomb never exploded.
“The money isn’t a problem, either. Ten million dollars is a drop in the bucket as far as government spending goes. It may take some doing to round up that amount in a short time, but it’s not a major concern.
“The third demand is the stickler, Ben. Inner Delta. I can’t tell you what Inner Delta is—I can only say that its work is secret, highly specialized and important in the defense of this nation. I have given my life to it. And, in a sense, gave you and your mother’s lives to it by bringing you to Delta. And the dismantling of Inner Delta is the major reason why the children have been abducted. We are convinced of that. The release of the prisoners and the demand for the money are smokescreens. The major issue here is Inner Delta.”
We were sitting in the living room and it was as familiar as my own face when I look into a mirror. But suddenly the familiarity took on a strangeness. Because of what my father was saying. Some kids had been hijacked and might be killed, and a secret U.S. agency was involved. And suddenly so were we—my father, my mother, and me. Not directly involved, of course. And yet, I reminded myself, there was a bodyguard standing outside and my mother was being detained out of town because the highways were dangerous for her to travel. I took a deep breath and felt a little dizzy, giddy, as if I were living in one of those little glass scenes that you shake to start the snow whirling around. There was no snow here, but our world was shaken up. I weighed the one question I wanted to ask my father but dared not. Are you General Briggs, Dad?
My father placed both hands on his knees and looked directly at me again. He seemed more relaxed now. That old hands-on-his-knees move always was a prologue to some decision, it seemed. Like: let’s go out and throw the ball around. Or: why don’t the two of us take in a movie? Now he said: “So there you have it, Ben. I wanted you to know the truth. There’s going to be a lot of stuff on radio and television and in the newspapers. A lot of it will be garbled and wrong. Some of it we will mean to be wrong. We have to guard Inner Delta. And it’s going to mean withholding certain information or”—he sought the right word, one he wanted me to hear, and found it—“or obscuring the information. But I don’t want you to be confused by anything you hear. I’ve told you the facts of the case. I want to assure you that your mother’s safe and so are you. But we have to take all precautions, as a matter of procedure, Ben.”
But there was one question I had to ask, whether it involved secrecy or not. And I asked it:
“Are you going to meet the demands of the hijackers, Dad?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment and looked tired suddenly.
“We have to wait for official policy to be announced,” he said. “But I can’t envision giving in to the demands of hijackers. This would set a precedent that could touch off mass hijackings, the way it’s happened in other countries.” He shook his head.
“But what happens if you don’t give in?” I asked, thinking of the kids on the bus and remembering all the hijackings in the world in which innocent people, including kids, died.
“We’re not completely helpless, Ben,” he said. “We’ve launched one of the most massive investigations in the history of our country. It involves thousands at all levels of law enforcement. Federal, state, and local authorities are at work. We have clues—the method being used by the hijackers. There are informers out there, ready to give information. We’ve set up a national center to receive and correlate information. It’s a race against time, of course, but we’ve already made progress. Meanwhile, we have to prepare to bargain. Or make a pretense of bargaining. And there are other possibilities I can’t go into now. Anyway, we are proceeding on the assumption that we won’t have to meet the demands and the children will be saved.”
He stood up then, slowly, achingly, as if his own body was making demands he was finding difficult to meet He sighed again. “One child has already died, Ben.”
“They killed him?” I asked, stunned. Were there really people in the world who killed children?
“We aren’t certain yet. One of the hijackers lowered the body from the bridge. After doing a crazy dance with the child in his arms.”
“Was the hijacker in plain sight? Why didn’t someone shoot him?”
“Their messages said that a child would die for every one of the hijackers who was killed, either by sniper fire or any other way. We can’t take chances, Ben. And we’re not sure about the death of the child. There was no evidence of violence on his body. It appeared that he had been drugged. They’re carrying on tests right now. But the fact remains—a child has already died. And there are fifteen more on the bus, plus the girl who was driving it.” He came across the room and placed his arm around my shoulder. He had not touched me in years, except to shake hands on occasion, like when my report card was unusually good. “I’ve got to get back,” he said. “But I’ll keep in touch. Your mother will be through to you on the phone a little later. We’re arranging special lines. But stay in the house, Ben. And be patient. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He stood there in his proper shirt and tie, the colors subdued, the style muted, touches of gray like small pale slivers in his hair. He did not look like a general and he did not look like a man heading a secret agency with operatives all over the world. All that seemed impossible. It seemed almost impossible, too, that a bunch of kids whose lives were in peril had anything to do with me, with us, here in our house on Fort Delta, which always had seemed to be a quiet and placid place. Even boring sometimes. Again, I had the feeling that someone had turned our world upside down, topsy-turvy, and the pieces had not yet settled into place. I wondered if they ever would.
Let us pause here for a second, not a pause for station identification but another kind of identification: where I am, who I am.
For a minute there, typing madly, I was back home on that afternoon of the hijacking. With my father. And now I’m back in this room and my fingers are perspiring from all this typing and they keep slipping off the keys. I have a pain in my back from sitting hunched at the typewriter.
He has been gone for more than a half hour.
He has been gone longer than he stayed in the room talking to me.
It’s hard to believe he was really here.
He didn’t do much talking. And he barely looked at me, stealing quick glances once in a while when he thought I wasn’t looking. And our conversation was a failure. Oh, he told me that Inner Delta was saved with only minor damage, but he volunteered no further information. Secrecy time again. We are back at Go.
I asked him why my mother, his wife, had not accompanied him.
He said she has a touch of flu, nothing serious, but she preferred not to take the long trip. She would call me later today. He was planning to stay overnight and had arranged for a room at the Pompey Inn. Perhaps we might have dinner there, it seemed a decent place. He had returned here as a guest lecturer on occasion and also for a class reunion or two, and the old school still seemed like a fine place. Some of his happiest days had been spent here. There were changes, of course. Most of his old teachers were gone, but life was like that, always changing. I didn’t mention old Mr. Chatham. I listened mostly, wondering how long he could go without looking at me. He looked everywhere in the room except at me. I wondered: Am I really here? If he finally looks at me, what will he see?
Finally, he fled this room, with his excuses.
I see him now.
He and Dean Albertson are walking across the quad together. Parting now, my father waves to him. Dean Albertson is carrying a Christmas wreath. I have forgotten that Christmas is coming soon.
Is Chris
tmas the time of year that Catholics must go to confession, or is that some other holy day? I’ll have to ask Donateli, who seems to be a Catholic. Maybe that’s what I need. Not to be a Catholic, but to confess. Because after confession comes forgiveness, doesn’t it? What do they call it? Absolution. And yet I realize that I don’t have to confess. He already knows what I’ve done. On the bridge. But I still have to ask forgiveness. If I do, will he forgive me?
He’s on his way to the room now.
I know. I can feel him coming.
And now I need to flee, get out of here, and leave.
Hide.
But is there any place to hide?
part
6
“The bathroom,” Kate said.
“What about the bathroom?” Miro asked.
“The kids. One of them has to go. And that means all of them will have to go eventually.”
“There is no bathroom,” Miro said. “They cannot go. There is no place for them to go. This is a bus.”
“You tell them. You can’t stop kids from going to the bathroom,” Kate said, taking a small pleasure in this bit of defiance.
Miro grimaced in exasperation. His first responsibility, and he was faced with this kind of problem. A foolish problem. He had schooled himself to remain intact, not to give in to the demands of the body. It was one of the things you learned. He looked at the children with distaste. He did not want to go to Artkin with this problem. He would look foolish in Artkin’s eyes.
“Well, what you are going to do about it?” Kate asked, pleased at Miro’s discomfort.
Miro turned to the children. “Who needs—” He waved his hand to complete the sentence. He hated these crude and coarse American words. The children stared at him blankly. “Who needs the bathroom?” Miro managed to say.
A girl held up her hand. “I do.” Another hand shot up. And another.
“There is no place for them to go,” Miro said to Kate furiously. He swiveled toward the children once more. “No one can go,” he yelled at them.
To emphasize the words, he drew on the mask and regarded them menacingly.
A little girl stepped into the aisle. A stream of urine traced a course down her leg and spread onto her blue sneakers, turning the powder blue a deeper hue. She began to cry.
At that moment, Artkin entered the bus. He took off his mask. The child continued to cry, her sobs getting louder and louder, and the urine continuing to stream down her leg. “What is going on?” Artkin asked.
“The kids. They need to go to the bathroom. And he says they can’t,” Kate replied, nodding toward Miro, sorry for the poor child who stood there soaked in her own urine. Kate was familiar with that feeling.
Artkin ignored Kate and spoke directly to Miro. “These things cannot be helped. There’s a plastic pail in the van. Bring it here.” And to Kate, he said: “You have another duty, miss. You are in charge of the pail.”
Miro shot Kate a look of triumph.
“When the pail needs to be emptied, ask Miro’s permission and he will allow you to empty it outside,” Artkin said. Addressing the children, he said: “In a moment, all of you will be able to go to the bathroom. It will not be like your homes but pretend it is an adventure. The lady here will assist you.”
Later, Artkin came onto the bus with two brown paper bags in his hand.
Kate recognized what they were—and what they meant. “No,” she cried out, leaping to her feet.
Artkin stopped in his tracks. Miro held his breath. No one ever protested to Artkin that way; no one ever said no to him.
“Out of the way, miss,” Artkin said.
“I don’t want the children drugged again,” Kate said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“It is not your concern, miss,” he said patiently, but it was the kind of patience that carries a warning: do not go too far.
“You said the children are my responsibility,” Kate said. “And they are. For as long as they’re on the bus.”
“Then you should be happy that we have the drugs to keep them quiet. So that they won’t know what’s going on,” Artkin said. “It will be a long, hard day for everyone. Perhaps longer than a day. Two days, three. The drugs will keep them sleepy. It will help them, if anything. You should be happy that we have the drugs.”
“But one of them died,” Kate reminded him. “The drugs killed one of them.”
“An accident. The child had a weak heart, perhaps. An unfortunate reaction. But the others showed no bad effects.”
“There’s no guarantee,” Kate said, knowing her objections were futile, her voice faltering now.
“There is no guarantee of anything in this life, miss,” he said, brushing past her now, taking the candy out of a bag and holding it up for the children to see. The children responded immediately, holding up their hands: Want some.… Me, too.… Chocolate.…
Miro sighed, softly, with relief. The girl had lost the argument, as Miro knew she would. But she had defied Artkin again and Artkin had not retaliated. Yet, Miro knew that Artkin had no cause for retaliation. The girl was doomed, anyway.
So began a time at mid-afternoon when the children came under the influence of the drugs. From this time on, the children were doped and dazed, sluggish with sleep, limp and listless. They ceased to have identities. Earlier, Kate had gone among them, asking their names, rousing those still slumbering, trying to make some kind of contact with them. The names had individualized the children for Kate, but she still got some of them mixed up. There was Monique, of course, still longing for her Classie, and the freckled, red-haired boy who was Alex. Karen with tiny earrings in her pierced ears and Chris who was a boy but might have been a girl with his bangs and flowing brown hair. Raymond with his eyes still closed. Kimberly who wore steel-framed glasses, one lens cracked. Alison and Debbie and Kenneth and Jimmy, whom she had not yet sorted out and so still got their names confused. Mary in pigtails, now unraveling. The two sisters, Ginny and Patty, who looked utterly unlike sisters, for Ginny was pale and delicate, almost transparent, and Patty was dark and robust. P.J., thin-faced and sad-eyed, who had hardly uttered a word (someone else had volunteered his initialed identification), and Tommy who wore horn-rimmed glasses that seemed permanently smudged and probably contributed to his perpetual squint.
With the latest dose of drugs, the children had become a drowsy, dozing, pathetic gathering of arms and legs, heads and shoulders: bodies only, not people. Once in a while, an individual rose from the mass. A child would come awake in a dazzling moment of clarity and truth, suddenly thrust into horror: Where am I? Where’s Mommy? Where’s Daddy? I want to go home. Kate would soothe the waking children, holding them in her arms, stroking their foreheads, caressing their cheeks, murmuring sweet nothings until the flash of wakefulness passed and they sank again into sleep, eyelids fluttering, sometimes a bubble of spittle in the corner of a loose and languid mouth.
The bus seated forty persons, so there was plenty of room. Kate had allowed the children seats of their own unless someone wanted to stay with a friend. Some had brought along teddy bears or other stuffed toys. Ginny and Mary and P.J. clung to their security blankets or, rather, the remnants of them, P.J. passing his patch of blanket caressingly across his cheek as he dozed. As Kate watched them dozing or sleeping, caught in a world without time or tempo, a small dim part of her was grateful for the drugs. To some extent, they helped. The drugs spared the children the knowledge of their predicament, held at bay the nightmare of being hostages. Drugged, they didn’t know the dangers that surrounded them. They wouldn’t miss their mothers and fathers so badly.
Kate thought of her own mother and father. God, what were they thinking? She realized she had barely given them a thought since the takeover of the bus. Maybe she had purposely blocked them out of her mind, just as she tried not to think of the kids at school. Thoughts panicked her; so did memories. She had to concentrate on the bus and the children, here and now. She had to stop the tendency to push panic buttons.
> Passing down the aisle, Kate noticed Raymond, the plump cheeks, the closed eyelids that moved sometimes. She was convinced that the boy was not really sleeping, that he was faking it.
He was alone in the seat, his head reclining against the taped window. She sat down beside him.
“Raymond,” she said.
He didn’t answer. She could hear his breathing, saw the gentle rise and fall of his chest.
“Raymond, you can’t fool me. I know you’re not sleeping.”
“I know,” he said, eyes still closed.
“Why are you pretending to sleep?” she asked, whispering now.
“I didn’t eat the candy,” Raymond said. His deep old man’s voice.
“Why not?”
“My mother doesn’t allow me to eat candy. Or chew gum. Even sugarless gum. She says it’s bad for my teeth and I’ll thank her someday.”
He opened his eyes. They were bright and alert, transforming his fat baby face into the visage of an intelligent little human being. Like a grown-up person in miniature. He glanced toward the front of the bus where Miro stood guard. Leaning toward Kate, he whispered: “After I heard you talking to the men, I knew they’d put poison or dope or something in the candy. I told Monique not to eat any but she did, anyway. Then I pretended to sleep, like the others. I thought they’d be mad at me and punish me if I didn’t sleep.”
Poor kid, Kate thought, alone all this time, and awake.
“Is Kevin coming back?” Raymond asked.
“Oh, Raymond,” she said.
She had dreaded this moment when one of the children would inquire about Kevin McMann. Until now, none of the children had said anything about Kevin, had shown no curiosity about him, why he had lain on the back seat apart from the others, why Artkin had carried him out of the bus. They had been doped up, of course, their senses dulled. Probably children were like adults who blinded themselves from the truth by pretending it did not exist. Or maybe little kids had no loyalties except to their mothers and fathers; other kids slipped in and out of their lives without leaving anything behind, not even memories. Whatever the reason, Kate had been relieved at their lack of questions. But leave it to Raymond. Bright and alert Raymond.
After the First Death Page 8