“They separated everybody by region and then had each region draw straws.”
“And you drew a winning straw?” Christopher asked.
The tall man smiled. “I didn’t have to. No one else was from my region.”
“Where are you from?”
“Afghanistan,” Tor Baz answered Christopher.
“You’re Tor Baz?” Umut said to the tall man, smiling.
“I am,” Tor Baz answered, smiling back, excited to be known. The elevator stopped moving. The door opened onto a white-walled room that covered the entire floor. Tor Baz held the door so that Umut and Christopher could step inside the room.
Christopher counted the people in the room. True to Tor Baz’s word, there were fourteen. Tor Baz made it an even fifteen. About half of them had dark skin, a few with skin even darker than Tor Baz’s. The other half had light skin. Europe, Christopher thought as he scanned the faces of the people in the room. Africa. The Middle East. The people in the room—nine men, six women—stared back at him.
“C’est l’Enfant,” a man in the back whispered to himself. “It’s the Child,” Xavier then said in English when he realized that everyone could hear his whisper over the almost overbearing silence.
“Welcome,” a woman said, stepping forward to greet Christopher. Her accent was lush and her voice husky. It sounded to him the way Istanbul smelled.
“This is your house?” Christopher asked the women.
“Yes,” she answered.
“It’s lovely,” he told her.
“Thank you,” the woman said to Christopher. Then she turned to Umut. “Umut, shall we begin?”
Umut seemed to think that there would be more formality first, perhaps even introductions. Christopher could see it on Umut’s face. Yet Umut knew that anything he said would reflect on Christopher. So he turned back to the woman. “If you’re ready,” he said.
Christopher had been so busy looking at the faces that he hadn’t noticed the chairs. Sixteen tall leather chairs were set up in the middle of the room. Fifteen of them had been arranged in a semicircle, facing inward. The sixteenth was placed at what would have been the center of the circle, alone, facing the rest.
Christopher knew which of the chairs was his. He knew what was at stake, and he was afraid. The running and the fighting and the killing and the hiding all scared him, but not like this. So Christopher did what he always did when he was afraid. Without waiting for an invitation, Christopher walked toward the sixteenth chair, the one in the middle, and sat down. “Let’s get this started,” he said to no one in particular. Christopher didn’t catch the smiles on Umut’s, Tor Baz’s, and Xavier’s faces at his act of brazenness, because after Christopher sat down he only stared at the fifteen empty chairs. And soon all of the chairs were occupied.
The chairs filled up quickly. Everyone knew where to sit. The seats had been assigned ahead of time. Umut was left without a chair, a mere spectator. He stood near the elevator door. Tor Baz was stuck on one end of the semicircle. The host sat in the middle. Xavier sat two chairs to her left. The twelve others filled in the remaining seats. “We’ve been impressed by what we’ve heard about your trip to the Far East,” the woman began, “and we’ve all heard about the plan.” She looked around at the others, all of them staring at Christopher. “But we have questions.”
“I would hope so,” Christopher said coolly, trying to remember everything that Umut had told him and Reggie the night before so that he would maybe, possibly have satisfactory answers. They believe in Christopher’s ability but they’re unsure of whether or not they believe in the plan, Umut had told them. Christopher wished that Reggie was with him to help him describe the plan or that Addy was there with him to help him be brave or that Evan was there with him to be a true ally. Christopher was alone, but he didn’t let anyone see his fear. “Fire away,” he said, scanning the faces of his interrogators.
The questions started out easy enough. In the beginning, Christopher had answers. They were answers to questions that he and Reggie had already discussed.
“How will the planning for the destruction of each Intelligence Center be done?”
“We’ll leave it up to the local people to plan. They’ll know better than anyone else what will work. Nobody can micromanage something this big.” Christopher wasn’t sure he believed that answer. He hadn’t been sure he believed it when Reggie first said it to him. Reggie had explained to him why it had to be done that way though. It was as much political as practical. Reggie knew that they wouldn’t get people to agree to be subjects in their own homes. Not these people anyway. After all, everyone in that room was already a rebel.
“How do we know that the people in other cities can be trusted to do the jobs?”
“Everybody knows the ramifications of what we’re doing here. They all know what it would mean if we failed. And we’re not picking people off the streets for this. These are people who have already proven themselves. They’re leaders in the Underground.”
“What order will the cities go in?”
“It all has to be simultaneous. We can’t give them any time to warn each other. We can’t give them a chance to bolster their defenses. We’re outgunned and outnumbered. Surprise is the only real weapon we have.”
“And then the War is just supposed to end?”
“No,” Christopher told them. “It doesn’t just end. The War ends because we give people a reason to believe that it’s over. That’s what most people want. We’re giving them the excuse they’ve been waiting for. How can people keep fighting a War when they don’t know who their enemy is? What do you do when you no longer know who it is you’re supposed to hate? Strangers can become strangers again. The paranoia can finally come to an end. That’s what people want to believe, and we think we can make them believe it.”
“Won’t some people remember who their enemies are?”
“On the fringes, sure, but the numbers will be small. A few people will remember a few enemies. Some will even keep fighting, but how long can they keep fighting when they have no support and no hope of ever winning?”
“But what do we get to keep?”‘
Christopher looked at the man who had asked him the question. He was a stocky white man with an accent that sounded Eastern European. For the first time in nearly two hours of questions, Christopher didn’t know how to respond. It had been going so well. “I don’t understand what you’re asking,” Christopher said.
“After we destroy the Intelligence Centers,” the man clarified, “what do we get to keep?”
“Nothing,” Christopher told him, still confused. The room went dead silent. “Everything has to be destroyed.”
“We can’t destroy everything,” one of the women gasped.
“Why not?” Christopher turned toward her and asked.
“That’s our history,” one of the black men chimed in. “We can’t simply destroy it all.”
“Your history,” Christopher said the word as if he wanted to spit, “is what’s feeding the War. That’s how we end the War. We starve it. You can’t keep your history and still end the War. That’s the whole point.”
“You’re a book burner!” shouted a shocked voice. Christopher didn’t even see who shouted it.
Christopher stared at them all. “What is it that you think you’ll find in that history? What do you believe is in there that’s worth keeping?” The room went silent. Nobody wanted to say anything. Then Christopher remembered his conversation with Reggie on their plane ride from Malaysia to Istanbul. Reggie had asked Christopher why he never asked about how the War started. Reggie had hit on Christopher’s blind spot. Now Christopher looked at the people sitting in front of him. They all knew what they hoped they would find in those histories, but nobody wanted to say it out loud. “You think you’ll find absolution in there,” Christopher said to the row of silent faces after it hi
t him. “Even you, a room full of rebels who claim to hate the War, you still think that you’ll find something in the past that will justify the things that you did before you left the War, the things that your friends did, the things that your family did. You want history to wash away your sins.
“Don’t you all understand by now that it doesn’t work that way?” If Christopher couldn’t get them to understand, then the whole plan was hopeless. “None of it matters. You think it matters, that it makes some sort of difference, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter who started the War. It doesn’t matter why the War started. All of you still think that something in that history will prove that you have always been the good guys. But knowing how the War started or who started it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t change what you’ve done or what you watched be done in your name or what you allowed to be done while doing nothing to stop it. Nothing that happened in the past can absolve you of sins you’ve already committed. All that matters is what we do now.”
“So we’ll never know the truth?” someone asked.
“You’ll become the truth,” Christopher said, needing to give them something. The faces of the men and women in the room were expressionless—utterly blank. “We’ll all become the truth,” Christopher finished.
The late-afternoon sun dipped in the sky and began to shine directly through the windows into the room. The room began to heat up. No one spoke for what seemed like a very long time. Christopher could feel sweat rising on his skin. He wanted to say something, but he had nothing more to say. Then the heavyset Eastern European man huffed, “He’s a kid. What does he know anyway?” Christopher thought the man’s comment would be met by nodding heads and murmurs of agreement, but it was met by even more silence. For the longest time after that, nobody even moved. It was almost like everyone in the room was in a state of shock.
“Are we done here?” Umut eventually asked, walking up and placing a comforting hand on Christopher’s shoulder.
“I think so,” the woman who owned the house said.
So Christopher stood up. He turned toward the others, readying to say good-bye, to tell them that he hoped they would make the right decision. As he turned, Umut squeezed his shoulder with a grip like none Christopher had ever felt before. He held Christopher in place, keeping him from facing the tribunal again. “Don’t say more,” Umut whispered to him. “You’ve said enough.” Steering with the hand that was gripping Christopher’s shoulder, Umut maneuvered Christopher toward the elevator. Neither of them looked back. They waited for the doors to open. Then they stepped into the elevator. A moment later the doors closed behind them and they once more descended towards the city.
Fifty-one
Evan, Addy, and Maria were staying in a motel outside of Albany, waiting for word that they should head into New York. The motel reminded Maria of the places where she and Joseph used to stay when she was pregnant with Christopher and they were on the run—cheap, nameless hotels sitting precipitously close to the edge of existence. The motel’s walls were painted concrete. The water never got hotter than lukewarm. The three of them agreed to keep the blinds drawn so no one could see inside, even though there was no evidence that anyone had picked up their trail. They made it across the border without incident, hiding Evan in the trunk again.
The three of them shared the room. It had two beds. Addy and Evan slept in one bed and Maria slept in the other. Evan and Addy made Maria feel old. She had to fight to keep herself from questioning them about whether or not they were too young to be sharing a bed. She had an urge to suggest that she and Addy sleep in one bed and Evan sleep in the other, but she bit her tongue. She kept reminding herself that she had been younger than Addy when she and Joseph were on the run together. The two of them were so much like her and Joseph. They were young and in love. Theirs was that crazy, youth-against-the-world kind of love. It was the Romeo and Juliet kind of love, the kind that never led to anything good. It was the same sort of love that Maria had shared with Joseph, though her romance with Joseph seemed like a very long time ago, almost like it took place in another life. She worried that Evan and Addy’s romance, like her romance with Joseph, was destined for trouble.
Maria tried her best not to talk much when the three of them were all together. She didn’t want to intrude on what Evan and Addy had. She talked only when one of them was out of the room, when one of them was in the shower or running an errand. She didn’t have much to say anyway. She only had questions and she really only wanted the answer to one of those questions. So Maria waited until Addy had gone out to buy food, so that she knew Addy would be gone for a good chunk of time, to ask Evan that one question. “Tell me about my son,” she said to Evan once Addy had left.
“What do you want to know?” Evan asked in return.
Everything, Maria thought, but she knew that was too much. She knew she had to guide Evan. He was so young. “What was his mother like?” she began.
Evan smiled. “His parents are really nice. They’re great. They love him.” He answered in the present tense, as if Christopher could go back to them. Maria knew better.
“And Christopher?”
Evan nodded. “He loves them too. He’s trying to protect them from all of this.”
“They deserve to know where he is,” Maria said, thinking about her own parents, both gone now. “Tell me more.”
“What else?”
“Did he know that they weren’t his biological parents?”
“Yeah,” Evan told her. “They told him when he was little. I think he would have known anyway.”
“Did he wonder about me? Did he think about me? Was he mad at me?”
Evan nodded. “I think he did wonder about you, but there was so much going on that he didn’t understand. I don’t think he was mad at you. He was too busy trying to make sense of everything.”
“Do you think he’ll be happy to meet me?”
“Yes,” Evan said without hesitating. “I think he will.”
Maria had to fight back tears. She didn’t know if Evan was telling her the truth. She hoped that he was, but she was grateful even if he wasn’t. “Thank you,” she said to him.
Evan saw the tears build up in Maria’s eyes. “You can ask me more,” he said to her. “You can ask me anything about him.”
Maria smiled now. Her smiles were so rare that she felt the muscles in her face tire almost immediately. “What does he like? What’s his favorite thing?” And on and on it went like that for an hour, until Addy returned. Then Maria became quiet again, trying to once again disappear into the background.
Fifty-two
Brian was sitting on a bench in Battery Park, staring out over the Hudson River. Jared saw him from a full two blocks away. Even from that distance, Jared recognized the gray hair, the wrinkled eyes. Jared wondered how Brian had survived this long. Brian was probably only about fifty years old, but that was ancient in his line of work. It was hard enough getting old when you were a part of the War. Usually, the only ones who survived past the age of forty were the ones that retired, settled down, and had kids. The breeders. Rebels didn’t get to retire. Only a handful of them made it past the age of thirty-five, let alone fifty. Jared liked meeting with Brian. Brian was one of the few people that Jared talked to that made him feel young. Jared also remembered what Brian had done for Joseph. Without Brian’s help, Joseph might have been killed eighteen years ago, before Jared was able to protect him. Without Brian’s help, someone else would have killed Joseph. Joseph deserved better than that. Jared had never wanted Joseph to go out like an ordinary punk. He wanted Joseph to go out like a hero. If Jared had to kill Joseph to make that happen, he was willing to make that sacrifice, even if nobody else understood it. What Jared had failed to anticipate was the blowback. If it had been only Joseph, Jared could have come out of it a star, and he and Joseph would both have gotten what Jared wanted for both of them. Both of them would have
been heroes—heroes to different causes, but heroes all the same. But Jared had neglected to think about Michael. That was his mistake. Because of that mistake, only one of them got to become a hero. People had mostly forgotten Michael by now, and the only people who remembered Jared hated him.
Jared walked up and sat down on the bench next to Brian. They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t shake hands. “Thanks for coming,” Brian said.
“No problem,” Jared answered. “What’s this meeting about?”
“You offered to help us,” Brian said. “We think that we’re finally ready to accept your help.”
“I guess you didn’t get any better offers?” Jared joked.
Brain answered him with a glare. “Does your offer still stand or not?”
“I told you that I was willing to help but that I have no desire to become an ordinary spy. If you want me to help you, you better have something big planned. I’ve seen what being a spy does to you guys.”
Brian knew that Jared was referring to him and his gray hair and his wrinkled eyes. “I was never a spy,” Brian said to Jared. “I was only looking out for a friend.”
Jared laughed. “Whatever you say. So are you guys working on something big or not?”
Brian nodded. “Do you remember the plan that I told you about last time?”
Jared stared out over the water. “I do. I didn’t think you were serious, but I remember.”
“We are serious. This is as serious as it gets. Asia is in,” Brian said, speaking softly. “I received word this morning that Europe, Africa, and the Middle East have all agreed to join the plan too. They made the decision last night after meeting with Christopher. With all of them in, the Americas are a foregone conclusion. Christopher will still have to meet with them, but it’s only a formality.”