Part 2 (1/2)

Hammon shook his head. ”Tough break, Jimmy. He”s that unusual combination of a real gentleman with a strong street-sense, at least for Afghanistan. He”s among the best I”ve ever seen.”

Others, Mandy thought, saw things in Jimmy that she never had.

”You know I”ve offered him a job when he gets back on his feet,” Hammon continued.

No, Mandy hadn”t known, and the phrase ”back on his feet” made her cringe. But she nodded vaguely. ”In Afghanistan?” she said.

”I don”t know if he”ll want to come back, but he”d be good at it. How”s he doing?”

Why did she always stumble over this question? Because she felt she was supposed to say fine, and there was progress, and all that. She was supposed to be grateful her son had made it home, and forget how. ”You know how it is,” Mandy said. ”He”s okay.”

Hammon nodded, hesitated, and Mandy had the sense he was about to tell her something, maybe something important. But then the guard appeared, spoke to Hammon in Pashto, and handed over a note. Hammon held it out to her.

”A driver just stopped by and left this for you,” he said.

It was a single page, folded three times. She opened it carefully.

”Dear Mrs. Wilkens. I am very sorry that it is my duty to inform you Mr. Todd Barbery has been taken from the street by gunmen. I will do everything I can to act on Mr. Todd”s behalf in his absence, which I trust will not be long. I cannot meet you today, but tomorrow, please call me at this phone number. 700 201136. Very Best, Amin.”

Mandy stared at the words, trying to absorb them. Todd, kidnapped? It had been more than a decade since she”d seen him, but they”d been friends of sorts in their youth. Todd had married one of Mandy”s closest friends, Mariana, who”d died young. Todd, kidnapped? He had long experience in this part of the world, Mandy knew. If he didn”t know his way around the dangers here, no outsider did.

”What is it?” Hammon asked.

She handed him back the note and sank down on the edge of the bed.

Hammon read it in one glance, and refolded it carefully. ”You know, you can turn around right now. If your contact is unavailable, one of the next flights out is an option.”

Mandy hesitated only a single beat before shaking her head. ”No. No it”s not.” She took a deep breath. ”I came all this way. I”m not leaving at the first sign of trouble. Jimmy didn”t. You don”t.”

”Jimmy said you were pretty determined.”

”I bet determined isn”t the word he used.”

Hammon grinned. ”Can I keep this note for a little bit? Before you go anywhere, I want to check out this Amin person.”

”Of course.”

”Take some rest, Mrs. Wilkens. Rumi should have dinner soon. It”s downstairs. He rings a bell, and we all throng in.” Hammon left, closing the door behind him.

Mandy lay back on the bed, dropping her head against a pillow that felt as if it were filled with rice. She closed her eyes. She wouldn”t tell Jimmy about the kidnapping, she decided. And at dinner, she”d ask Hammon to keep quiet about it as well if he should talk to her son. In the distance, she heard the start of the hypnotic call to prayer. She realized that the jetlag, the travel, and the news about Todd had left her feeling deeply tired and yet too buzzed awake to nap. She would unpack her clothes in the quiet before dinner. It would be a symbolic commitment to her decision to stay, no matter what. So she rose, tugged open a zipper on her suitcase and began settling into the thick-walled room in the heart of a dusty, foreign city.

Clarissa, September 4th.

Clarissa pushed her way outside to stand on the front stoop; her apartment felt confining. She couldn”t bear to be waiting from in there for whatever would happen next out here. Her cheeks were slapped by a brilliant, raw morning, too bright and too cold for September, a morning already being spliced into haiku-like moments that would never, no matter how she tried, coalesce into a whole.

The air had an odd consistency, like Jell-O, and for several minutes she felt as though she had to concentrate on eating the sky in large, unappetizing gulps in order to stay alive. In front of a house half a block away, a narrow stretch of a man stood sweeping the sidewalk with a st.i.tch straw broom, making a scratching sound against the pavement as he gathered leaves into a pile. It was a hopeful act, wasn”t it? A belief in the future, in the order of things. She wanted to catch his eyes, maybe to smile or wave, but the bill of a blue cap hid his face and he didn”t look up.

Then someone called her name, as a question. ”Clarissa?” And there was Bill Snyder, hugging her, his cheek pressing hers for too long, as if it were a sponge absorbing moisture, his fleshy, presumptuous hands swallowing hers, pulling her back inside, and though she tried to resist, to explain that she didn”t want to be indoors, he spoke over her: what they knew, what they didn”t know, how concerned-hopeful-involved-sorry he was.

And then, a blurring, so that events did not stand out as separate. Ruby was suddenly there, less stiff than usual, more vulnerable, the situation bringing into sharp relief that they were family now, something the two of them had both silently conspired to ignore. Ruby was with her partner Angie, and they were quickly followed by Clarissa”s brother Mikey-painful to see his face so blanched, like a visual of her own shock, but thank G.o.d for his presence. How did they all find out? Maybe Clarissa had called them? She had no memory of this. Maybe it had been the FBI?

Mikey was speaking, but the words were impossible to discern. Once p.r.o.nounced, they seemed to dissipate like the exotic, brief scent of Casablanca lilies, the flowers she and Todd had chosen for their wedding in Montauk. Her wedding day. She hurried away from that memory, calling to it over her shoulder not now, not now, distracting herself by watching the movement of Mikey”s lips: tiny, discordant waves that rose and fell cautiously as if he didn”t want to open his mouth too wide. Which tight, tense words were managing to escape, Clarissa wondered. Which full ones were being trapped within? Fabulous, perhaps, or mandatory? Words that might apply to Todd, if only they could slip past constricted lips.

Todd. Let them talk around her; Clarissa would concentrate on Todd. Maybe he would just run away from his captors. Maybe he would call and say ”I”m free. Coming home.” Maybe even this morning. But from where, from whom would he escape? Was he bound? Was he blindfolded? In a tiny room, the trunk of a car, behind some rocks on a mountainside? As if it might help her find answers, Clarissa checked on her iPhone for the weather in Kabul. Sixty-nine degrees and sunny, with an expected high of 84. So at least he wasn”t cold. If he was still in Kabul, that is. And that led to other questions, but it was hard to focus on them in the midst of the voices talking around her, to her, over her, a coc.o.o.n of voices.

The phone rang, jarring, and Clarissa grabbed the receiver in order to silence it, wis.h.i.+ng she could silence everyone around her so easily and claim for herself a moment to think. ”Ms. Montague,” said a man”s voice. ”Hi. My name is...” A journalist, she knew immediately. It was as if they had a special accent. Wordlessly, she pa.s.sed the phone to Mikey. He spoke loudly, waving one arm for emphasis. Again, his words didn”t stick with her. And then he hung up.

And now Ruby was next to Clarissa, rubbing her eyes and wiping her nose with a knotted fist, suddenly a bereft child instead of the tough 28-year-old Clarissa had gotten to know. Ironically, she identified with this side of Ruby more closely. She put an arm around the younger woman, who seemed to be trying to contain herself, and failing. She was rocking in a way Clarissa understood she couldn”t control. Clarissa embraced her more tightly, but it was like trying to hold back a breaking wave. Angie, looking miserable, rose to get Ruby a gla.s.s of water.

”Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,” Ruby said in a voice raw as a skinned knee, a voice that seemed to carry its own echo.

”Let”s stay optimistic,” Bill Snyder said. ”Let”s hear what the FBI has to say when they get here.”

So Bill was still here, Clarissa thought.

”That”s right. Let”s wait,” Angie said as the doorbell rang over her voice. ”Want me to get it?”

Clarissa shook her head. ”I”ll get it.” But she waited, arm still around Todd”s daughter, until she felt Ruby gather herself. Then she rose and opened the door to a couple at her threshold. They didn”t look like FBI agents. The woman wore dress pants and a suit jacket and carried a large leather purse, but the man was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-s.h.i.+rt. They looked about 30, only a couple of years older than Ruby. Weren”t FBI agents supposed to be large and pale and middle-aged? Wasn”t it a job requisite?

”Clarissa Montague?” the man asked.

”Yes.”

”I”m Jack. This is Sandy.”

And now the informality of first names. Something else she didn”t expect from the FBI, not that she”d ever had any expectations about FBI agents in her home. ”Okay,” she said, but her legs responded silently: not okay. They were rooted in place. The presence of these two at her doorstep made everything too real.

Jack extracted his ID from his back pocket. ”You were expecting us, yes?”

No, I wasn”t expecting you. Not you, nor any of this.

She nodded and turned. They followed her into her kitchen.

”This is my brother, Mikey,” she said. ”And my stepdaughter Ruby and her partner, Angie. And my husband”s colleague Bill.” She paused. ”And these are the agents. Jack and Sandy.” The barest and most incomplete of introductions had already worn her out. ”Do you want something?” she asked. ”A cup of tea or...”

”No, we”re good,” Jack said.

Good? They each took a chair. Fortunately, the kitchen table was large enough to seat eight, Clarissa thought. Todd had considered it overkill, but Clarissa loved a big kitchen table as much as she loved the city, though they seemed like opposing impulses. The city was layer after endless layer of life, an impossible promise of infinity, while the kitchen table was more personal, inclusive and nurturing.

This was supposed to be the nurturing stage of her life.

A thick silence waiting to be born into something darker swallowed the room. At last, Jack spoke. ”I”m sorry about the circ.u.mstances that bring us here.”

That stilted sentence seemed to prompt Sandy into action; she opened her purse and pulled out a notebook. ”When is the last time you had contact with your husband?” she asked.

”Contact? I-” Clarissa cleared her throat. ”I already answered a lot of questions on the phone.”

”I”m sorry. We need this in person.”

Clarissa inhaled. ”We spoke on the phone last night. It was about 10 p.m. my time. It was morning of the next day in Kabul. I guess it must have been a few hours before...” She broke off, unable to put it into words.