What Changes Everything Part 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, wishing 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-shirt. 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.

"What did you talk about?"

It was not about, it was around. We talked around an argument about safety, and our future.

"Just small talk," Clarissa said.

"Can you remember anything specific? Anything at all might be helpful. For example, did he mention anything unusual, or any planned outings or meetings?"

G.o.d, what had he said that she"d be willing to share with these strangers sitting in her home wanting to sift through her underwear drawer? She struggled to remember precisely. "An Afghan woman was coming to see him in the office. He wasn"t sure what she wanted. He also was to meet some woman from Texas who wanted to visit a refugee camp. And he mentioned his a.s.sistant, Amin. He"s very close to Amin. That"s it."

"Do you need Amin"s contact info?" Bill Snyder asked, and then Clarissa"s attention wandered as he provided it and Agent Sandy wrote.

"What about you?" Jack asked Ruby after several minutes "I haven"t spoken to him in maybe two weeks." Ruby"s voice sounded shaky. "At least not directly."

"Directly?" Jack made an openhanded gesture that indicated puzzlement.

"We"re playing an online chess game," Ruby explained. "He makes a move in the evening his time and I make a move in the evening my time. He made the last move, about four days ago. I ..." Ruby began to choke up, restrained herself with effort. "It was my turn next."

"Did he mention anything in particular to you? Anyone he was meeting, or anything going on in his life?"

"We really only talked about chess," Ruby said. "We talk about light things when he is overseas. When he"s home, that"s when he tells me more serious stories."

"Did he ever bring up being threatened in any way?" Jack asked, his tone casual.

"Not really."

"He knew-knows that part of the world is not the safest," Clarissa said. "But he always said he felt well protected. And he was getting ready to quit. Is going to quit. He"s going to work from New York after this rotation." She glanced toward Bill Snyder, expecting him to nod in acquiescence, but his face remained expressionless, noncommittal, and she fleetingly wondered if he"d tried to talk Todd out of leaving the fieldwork. "You know, Todd worked on behalf of Afghans," Clarissa said. "Do his kidnappers get that?"

"Simply being a foreigner-"

"I know. I know, of course," Clarissa interrupted Jack.

"This is a business," Jack continued. "He"s an American and he was accessible. A target of opportunity. It"s that simple."

"What was he doing?" Clarissa turned to Bill Snyder. "I mean, when they..."

Bill Snyder shrugged. "Getting ice cream, Amin says."

"Christ," Clarissa said.

The kitchen fell silent for a moment. "And you?" Sandy asked Mikey.

Mikey shrugged. "Clari"s my only sibling. My only family, really. We"re close," he said. "But I wouldn"t know about Todd"s life day to day, beyond what Clari might mention."

Sandy turned to Angie. "Tell me about your connection to the family."

"Well, Ruby and I, we live together."

"How long have you known each other?"

"I lived with Todd and Ruby for a while when I was a teenager," Angie said "How long?"

"About a year."

"What were the circ.u.mstances?"

Angie shrugged. "Things were not going so great at home. Todd agreed to take me in. He fed me, watched over me, became a surrogate dad. Probably more than he bargained for."

"We understand you work as a psychic," Jack said.

Angie looked as surprised as Clarissa felt. How had they found out so much so quickly? Though she didn"t ask the question, Jack seemed to antic.i.p.ate it. He shrugged in a silent answer.

"I"m an RN," Angie said after a minute. "I work with a hospice. But yes, I do psychic fairs on the side, that kind of thing. That"s all."

"So you get premonitions?"

"Sometimes," Angie said hesitantly.

"Can you describe one for us?"

"I hope this is not the primary basis of your investigation," Clarissa said, her voice cool.

"Yeah," Angie said. "I actually don"t think this will be helpful."

"They"re just trying to think of everything," Ruby said in a soothing way that almost made Clarissa smile. She"d seen this side of Ruby with her father, too: a torrent of emotion almost as if she were a still rebellious teenager and then, at lightning speed, everything under control.

"Okay, well," Angie began, her voice sounding doubtful. "Last week there was this guy on the subway platform. It was about ten minutes after five, and I was headed home from work; he was wearing earphones and dark jeans and swaying to the music on his iPod and he looked like, you know, a regular commuter, a little trance-like, into his own isolated world, but whatever. And suddenly he stared right at me in a piercing way that made me think... well, that he was dead. I know it sounds strange, but that"s how it felt. And that he wanted me to do something, tell someone..."

"Go ahead," Jack encouraged.

"I looked around, and the platform was crowded and I had no idea who to approach, or what to say if I did, and then my train came, and I looked behind me, and I couldn"t see him anymore, you know, like he was lost in the flush of travelers, so I got on the car, and I figured, oh well, that"s it, I must be imagining things."

Sandy had stopped taking notes, and Clarissa agreed with that decision. Please, she wanted to shout. Let"s get serious here.

"Yes?" Jack said encouragingly.

"Two mornings later, I took one of those free newspapers they hand out at the subway entrance, I think it was AM New York, and I was flipping through it, and there it was. A photo of a man who"d stepped onto the tracks at my station shortly after 5 p.m. My man."

"Wow," Sandy said, though she didn"t sound particularly impressed.

"She"s pretty amazing," Ruby said.

"Have you had any feelings about Ruby"s dad?" Jack asked.

"No, no." Angie looked embarra.s.sed. "G.o.d, no."

"Now can I ask you a few questions?" Clarissa asked. "Because while all this may serve some purpose that is not occurring to me now, it seems clear what we really need to focus on is what"s happening on the ground in Kabul. Who are you talking to? Where do you think my husband is being held, and by whom?"