Chapter 7
Lost and Found and Lost
London – September 23, 2001
Patience waited impatiently, the queue at passport control inching forward at a snail’s pace. When her turn finally came, she stepped gingerly up to the control counter.
“Passport, please,” the agent instructed.
Handing over her passport, Patience responded good-naturedly, “Good morning, sir.”
Examining her passport carefully, he inquired, “How long are you in London for, Miss Smith?”
“Just long enough to catch the Chunnel to Paris,” she responded cheerfully.
“Do you have a Chunnel ticket that I could see?” the agent queried.
“No, I plan to buy it today,” she answered naively.
“In that case, I will need some proof that you are able to do so,” the agent responded.
“I’m not sure I understand,” Patience replied. “Like what exactly?”
“Well, sufficient cash or travellers cheques would do.”
“Oh, of course,” Patience responded. “I have five hundred dollars in cash,” hoping that was enough.
“May I see it, please?” the agent asked insistently.
Fumbling in her purse, she drew out the cash for the agent, who in turn counted it and quickly returned it to her. The agent then picked up his stamper and pounded Patience’s passport and, handing it back to Patience, he said, “Have a pleasant stay in London.”
“Thank you,” Patience responded and, heading for customs, she thought to herself, “This is a different world over here. I’m going to have to learn the ropes quickly.”
Possessing no checked bags, she bypassed the luggage return belt and headed straight for customs. After clearing customs she went directly to information, where she was informed that the Chunnel departed from Waterloo Station in downtown London. Two hours later, she had arrived at Waterloo Station, where she summarily purchased a ticket for the Chunnel.
She then foraged for food in the vast station, finding the exercise somewhat liberating. London was like nowhere she had ever been in her life. For the first time in her recent memory no one here knew her, and furthermore, no one on Earth knew where she was. “This is real progress,” she thought to herself with newfound optimism.
The Chunnel ride was simply grand. From the suburbs of London, to the channel tunnel itself, to the rolling French countryside, within a span of three hours Patience felt as if she had entered into a completely new and perhaps even unfettered chapter in her life.
Upon her arrival in Paris, Patience realized rather abruptly that it was not going to be as easy as she had surmised in London, the French language presenting a nearly insurmountable barrier. Even when she managed to find someone who spoke English, she could understand very little of their heavy accents. Furthermore, in Paris few signs were written in English.
She became so distraught that she seriously considered turning around and going back to London. But then she reminded herself that she was still on the run, and London was far too close to home both culturally and geographically for comfort’s sake.
Rallying her persistence, she managed to eventually make her way out of the train station with a plan of action, a woman in the tourist information office at the train station having helped her to reserve a room in a cheap hotel nearby. Although she had managed to save more than three thousand dollars, she had no idea how long that would last her. She therefore decided to do everything on the cheap that she possibly could, thereby permitting her cash to last as long as possible.
She found the hotel with little difficulty, and as soon as she arrived, she went straight to bed and, sleeping for eighteen hours, she awakened at five in the morning the following day. Realizing that she was jet lagged when she was unable to go back to sleep, she hopped excitedly from bed, deciding to go for a walk and see something of Paris. She showered for the first time in three days, and by six A.M. she was out on the street, imagining herself to be a well-to-do American tourist on holiday.
Having forgotten the rather early hour, Patience was surprised to find once she was out on the street that, since it was not quite sunrise, it was rather grey and sullen on the streets of Paris. At first everything appeared to be deserted, but within minutes she saw a woman coming up the street towards her who was, by her appearance and mannerisms, quite obviously a lady of the night.
As the apparition before her came closer, she suddenly tugged her pants down, urinating nonchalantly in plain view. A drunk, stopping to observe the unanticipated show on the opposite side of the street, patiently partook of the scene until the lady of the night had completed her business. Tugging up her pants, the woman turned towards the man across the street, announcing loudly in perfect guttural English, “Yeah, you’d like some of that, wouldn’t you!” The man stared silently at the incongruously offended woman and, seeing that he was disinclined to pursue the matter further, the woman turned and strutted indignantly away.
Patience was horrified. She had seen many strange things in New York, but this was beyond depraved to her. She felt as if she had been somehow transported to some bizarre alternate universe. Paris was certainly a beautiful city, but this absurd event, more than anything else that she had experienced since leaving the United States, made her realize just how much her life had been altered. Now in exile, she thought to herself, “Yes, things are certainly going to be different here, but I am going to survive.” She then giggled to herself, still unable to come to grips with the incomprehensible performance to which she had just been witness.
She strolled for quite some time, and as she did so, it gradually grew lighter. Paris began to yawn, stretch and awaken from her nocturnal bliss. Within two hours, the streets had lumbered into full awakening. Now that shops were beginning to open their doors, Patience managed to find a light breakfast composed of a baguette and coffee. Munching contentedly on her bourgeois meal, she surmised that perhaps she would be able to survive in Paris after all.
Thereafter she found a metro station and, eventually figuring out how to purchase a billet, she used it to ride to the Eiffel Tower, the only place in Paris that she could think of to visit. Once there she joined the already lengthy line and purchased a ticket for the top level. The view from the pinnacle two hours later was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen in her life. She was for the first time in her memory on top of the world.
It had already been a day to remember, but after descending back to street level she began to feel the reality of her circumstances pressing back in on her. Her first challenge was to locate and purchase some articles of necessity for, in order to cover her tracks, she had been obliged to leave virtually all of her personal possessions behind in New York City.
Locating some tourists who spoke English, she was informed that there was an enormous underground shopping mall at Les Halles Metro stop, right in the heart of the city. They explained to her that although it was pronounced ‘lay all’, it was spelled quite differently. Thus, armed with the correct spelling, she took the metro there and within two hours she had purchased everything that she considered essential to her survival for the moment.
Next she returned to the Gare du Nord for the purpose of purchasing a train ticket to Italy, but she discovered that the TGV trains required the passengers to show their passports. Because she was relatively confident that her movements could be tracked all the way to Paris by anyone that was persistent and capable, she decided against this course of action. She needed her movements from there to be absolutely untraceable, so she decided on another approach – local trains.
Having been informed that most trains to central France departed from the Gare de Lyon, she subsequently purchased a ticket to Lyon for the following morning. She then returned to the hotel and prepared for the continuation of her journey the following day.
Three days later she arrived in Florence, having managed to travel on trains that did not require her to do anythin
g more than briefly show her passport to a ticket agent onboard the train. She was thus confident that her tracks from Paris could not be traced by any means known to man.
Within minutes of her arrival in Florence, she realized that, despite having had two semesters of Italian in college, she was unable to understand anyone at all. Italians, it seemed, spoke rapid fire, and they employed a depressingly excessive amount of vernacular that she had not been taught. On the other hand, she herself could speak enough Italian to make herself understood. Thus, she was able to establish a sort of one-way communication when necessary.
She booked into a hostel and, deciding to reconnoiter, she learned as much as she could about the city. Within a week she had learned her way around quite well, thereby allowing her to focus on soaking up the local Italian language as quickly as possible. Having determined by that time that since she did not possess a work visa a formal job was quite impossible, she continued to explore the city, searching for opportunities to make some money.
By the end of her second week in Florence, she had observed that a great number of Africans were attempting to make a living by selling items on the street in areas surrounding the Piazza della Signoria and the Santa Maria del Fiori. Although she did not think that this sort of thing was a reasonable means of support for her, she nevertheless considered the possibility that she might be able to try something somewhat comparable.
Having visited the Science Museum, she had been intrigued by the story of Galileo, about how he had been incarcerated for the last nine years of his life. She therefore went back to the museum and inquired where the house was that he had lived in. Unfortunately, no one at the museum seemed to know where it was. She therefore went to the library, therein discovering that not only had he lived the last eight years of his life in a house in the hillside village of Arcetri, but that there were also several other places that he had lived locally. She spent the next two days scouting out all of these locations, then set herself up in the Piazza della Signoria with a small handwritten sign that said, “Galileo Walking Tours in English.” The effect was miraculous. She scored two tours on the very first day, and within the first week she had made two hundred euros.
Aware that this would not serve as a long term job for the simple reason that she had no tour guide license, she reasoned that this would keep her going for a while, at least until she could find something more stable. Meanwhile, she kept a close eye out for polizia and, following the lead of the African street vendors, whenever the authorities passed through the piazza she simply put the sign away. Meanwhile, at night she studied the Italian language furiously.
Unfortunately, by the end of October the tourist season had already begun to wane, especially for English speaking tourists. Her proceeds off by thirty percent by the first week of November, the weather was by then also beginning to turn alarmingly colder.
One day while she was sitting in the piazza, a middle aged American man came up to her and asked how much she would charge to give a two hour tour of Galileo’s residences. Surveying the group of students accompanying him, she quoted a price of fifty euros, at which he immediately produced the requisite amount. Thus, off the pair went, trailed by twenty American students who appeared to be not too much younger than Patience herself.
At the end of the tour, the man complimented her, saying, “That was a lovely tour, Miss, er…?”
Taking his outstretched hand, she replied, “Margaret, Margaret Smith.”
“I am Professor James Wilson,” he replied pleasantly. “We’re here from Carnegie-Mellon University in the U.S. We are living this semester at a study center in Castiglion Fiorentino. Do you know Castiglion, Miss Smith?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” she responded.
“Look here, Miss Smith,” he continued, “It appears that you are not gainfully employed, at least not permanently.”
Eyeing him doubtfully for a moment, she replied, “And what is your point, Professor Wilson?”
“Well, er, forgive me for prying, but perhaps I could suggest gainful employment for you - that is, if you are at all interested?”
Suddenly interested, she queried, “What exactly did you have in mind, sir?”
“Look, I am in desperate need of an assistant at the study center, Miss Smith. I need someone who speaks Italian and knows Italy as you do, someone who is older and more mature than my students, someone who could act as my second in command. Frankly, I have my hands full keeping them out of trouble. I could provide room and board, and a salary of five hundred euros per month.”
“Sounds intriguing,” Patience replied. “Could I think it over, perhaps get back to you?”
“Of course. Here is my business card. And I’ll write the address for the study center on the back, together with the phone number. How soon might I hear from you, Miss Smith?”
“Oh, before the weekend I expect,” she responded.
“Excellent!” he replied. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you,” and at this he pressed a twenty euro tip into her hand.
Patience raced breathlessly back to the hostel. She was so excited she didn’t know what to do first. On thinking it through, she decided to go to the internet café down the street and do some checking. Sure enough, there was a Professor James Wilson listed on the faculty register within the College of Arts at Carnegie-Mellon. In addition, there was a study center in Castiglion by the name listed on his card. She therefore went immediately to a tourist store and bought every English guidebook that she could find on Italy. She spent the entire following day beefing up on her knowledge of Italy. She was certain that it wasn’t enough, but she felt that she could not pass up this opportunity to bury herself even further into the landscape of Italy via gainful employment in an obscure village.
The following day she boarded a train for the hour-long ride to Castiglion Fiorentino.
Florence, Italy - June, 2010
Awaiting his turn at passport control, Brandt had an almost hallucinogenic feeling that he might not be able to restrain himself from jumping the line in a desperate attempt to speed the process along. Such was the state of his anticipation. In the end, however, he managed to act like any other passenger arriving at Florence’s airport - jubilant but patient.
Having eventually cleared customs, he hurried outside and hailed a cab, having no notion and caring even less as to the amount of the cab fare. He was ushered into the first vehicle in line and was unsurprised to find that he had hooked up with one of those notorious Italian would-be race car drivers. On any other occasion he would have deplored such a lack of driving etiquette, but on this occasion he was overjoyed when he arrived at the train station in less than half an hour.
Awarding the driver an extraordinarily large tip, he thanked him for the hair-raising adventure and rushed inside to buy a one-way ticket from Florence to Arezzo. Given the fact that Al-Wadi was on the trail of Patience once again, that was as close to Castiglion Fiorentino as he had felt comfortable with living during his sabbatical. After all, Castiglion Fiorentino was only a twenty minute train ride away from Arezzo. Brandt therefore reasoned that if Al-Wadi’s buddies traced Brandt’s whereabouts, he might indeed lead them to their prey if he took the risk of actually living in Castiglion. Accordingly, Arezzo it had to be.
Surreptitiously, a small college in Arezzo gave him an excuse to visit for the summer. Hopefully, his precautions would ensure that no one would suspect his true reason for being in Italy. An hour later he was in Arezzo and, restraining himself from the nearly overwhelming desire to go straight from there to Castiglion, he made for Professore Pizzato’s office at the collegio. There he was welcomed and shown to his tiny office for the summer. The level of anonymity here in small town Tuscany was just what he needed for the challenge that lay before him – to find Patience – if indeed she was alive. He dared not even consider the alternative.
That night he found it quite impossible to sleep. Would his carefully died
hair, together with his full beard, be sufficient disguise? After all, it had been nearly thirteen years since their one and only meeting. Whether it was stark panic, anticipation of what was to come, or jet lag mattered not. In any case, he was rather out of sorts by the time he boarded the train for the short trip to Castiglion the following morning.
The Following Morning
On arriving in Castiglion Fiorentino, Brandt discovered that the train station was in the valley, whereas the city was quite a trek uphill from there. Having no alternative, off he trudged, the morning sunshine already sufficient to cause him to break a shirt-clinging sweat.
As he hiked along, he was surprised by the paucity of movement of any kind. Except for a single undernourished dog, he saw not one living being on the street in the first fifteen minutes of his upward trek. However, approaching the walled portion of the old medieval city, he began to notice a bit of traffic, all seemingly headed in the same direction. Following this string of both decrepit and tiny cars and motorcycles, he strolled completely around the ancient city walls. Arriving at the edge of the old fortress, he observed a church, the apparent source of the ringing bell he had heard earlier. Suddenly aware that it was Sunday, he realized that he had of course lost a day in the transatlantic crossing.
“No wonder there’s nothing moving here. It’s Sunday – everyone is attending Sunday service,” he commented to himself. Strolling gingerly down the hillside road adjacent to the city wall, he came to a city gate, through which he observed the entrance to the church, in front of which he was surprised to see a huge throng of middle aged diminutive Italian males. Incongruously, there wasn’t a single female to be seen anywhere.
Only later he would discover that this was normal custom in much of Italy. The familia went off to service, the family patriarch never so much as setting foot within during Sunday service. Instead, the entire mob of elderly men stood outside chattering like a flock of geese, oblivious to the pious proceedings within. Having no earthly idea what they were discussing, Brandt was nonetheless fairly certain that they were not debating today’s liturgy.
Recalling his primary mission, Brandt trudged down the hill and through the gate and, approaching an elderly gentleman who was not speaking to anyone at the moment, he inquired, “Scusi Signore. Ah lei uno momento questa mattina?”
The man stared doubtfully at him momentarily, then replied sternly, “Si, certo, signore. Que cosa vuoi?”
Brandt, already approaching the limit of his somewhat rusty Italian, brightened at this positive response and continued with, “Questa è una photo. Penso questa donna vive qui in Castiglion Fiorentino, è vero?”
The man studied the photo pensively, responding after a few moments, “Non so, signore, ma conosco questo uomo qui,” thereby pointing to a man in the photo. So he knew someone in the photo!
Before Brandt could ask another question, the man called out to a friend, “Paulo, vieni qui. Quest’oumo qui vuole trovare questa donna,” at which he pointed to the woman in the photo. “Sapete dove si trova?”
Yet another man now approached the pair, immediately followed by four additional men, all of whom were clearly curious as to the purpose of this unexpected intrusion on their monotonous lives. Before the man whom Brandt thought was Paulo could reach the growing gathering, another man grabbed the photo from Brandt and exclaimed, “Voglio guardare. Credo que…” and he paused a moment, contemplating. Suddenly, he exclaimed, “Ah, si! È Martina! Ah, guardate, è Martina!” at which point he surreptitiously passed the photo around to his friends, each and every one of whom scrutinized the photo and then broke into a sunny smile, saying, “Si, certamente, è Martina!”
Suddenly, Brandt was overwhelmed. After nearly a decade, he was back on the trail. Now he had a name – Martina. From the reactions of the men in the group it was obvious that Martina was well known in the community, and perhaps even more importantly, she was clearly regarded fondly by one and all.
Paulo now peered at Brandt doubtfully, offering in perfect English, “I am Paulo Ribusti, member of the city council of Castiglion. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking, signore?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Brandt replied. “I should have introduced myself. I am James MacAllister. I’m here in Italy working at the collegio in Arezzo for the summer. I’m looking for a person whom I met many years ago,” he lied. “You know how it is, with time childhood friends drift apart. I saw this picture in your local newspaper, and it looks like my friend. Might you know where I can find her?”
At this Paulo raised one finger to signal that Brandt should wait a minute, then turned and translated the entire exchange to his friends. There was much smiling, accompanied by surreptitious oohing and aahing, as each man understood the purpose of Brandt’s visit. Brandt wasn’t certain of it, but he thought he heard the word ‘amore’ uttered more than once as the gentlemen chattered among themselves, eyeing him jovially. Thinking better of dissuading them from their misconception, he decided to stick to his quest, which of course was to find Patience.
After a few further moments, Paulo turned back to Brandt, saying, “But of course, Signore MacAllister, everyone in Castiglion knows Martina! Such a lovely young lady.”
“Really!” Brandt replied excitedly. “Do you know where I can find her, Signore Ribusti?”
“Certamente, Capri!” he replied.
“Capri?” Brandt replied with disappointment, but that’s three hundred miles from here!”
At this, Paulo guffawed loudly and, translating for his friends, he elicited much the same reaction from them. Whatever the joke was, Brandt didn’t get it.
Paulo turned back to him, speaking now with an enormous grin, “Signore MacAllister, I am not speaking of the island of Capri. I am speaking of the Gelato Capri!”
Totally confused by this, Brandt replied, “Non capisco, signore,” at which the entire entourage hooted yet again.
“Signore,” Paulo replied, “I’m sorry, I do not intend to mislead you. Gelato Capri is an ice cream parlor.”
Stroking his chin in exasperation, Brandt responded, “Oh, I see…do you know where it is located, signore?”
“Of course! It is on the main street, right in the center of Castiglion,” he replied.
“Ah, now I see! Capisco!” Brandt replied with obvious delight, grinning perceptively to the men who had by now surrounded him. They in turn smiled back at him, nodding knowingly in perfect unison.
“Unfortunately, it is chiuso on Sunday, so you will have to wait until tomorrow, signore."
Disappointed by this revelation, Brandt concluded - what was one more day after so many years of searching? “Oh, that’s quite alright. I shall just take the opportunity to see the city, and I shall come back tomorrow.”
“Perfetto!” Paulo replied, turning to translate for his friends. There ensued some sort of disorganized ceremony, as each and every man gave Brandt a jovial and hearty slap on the back, as if they anticipated some sort of fireworks on the following day. For his part, Brandt concluded that the inhabitants of Castiglion were desperately in need of some sort of diversionary entertainment.
The Following Evening
Brandt returned to Castiglion. Having put in his requisite full workday in his cubby hole at the collegio, he once again trudged up the hill from the train station, on this occasion entering into the central part of the city via the Porta Firenze. The timeless beauty of this ancient city was not lost on him. Decrepit though it was, it was nevertheless possessed of a certain romantic charm. From the Porta Firenze he sauntered up the street and, coming to a curve, there, not fifty yards distant, he saw a blue neon sign that read ‘Gelato Capri’.
His heart thumping furiously as he approached the tiny shop, he noticed that there was a small crowd within. The clamorous patronage within composed mostly of children screaming for gelato, he nonetheless recognized her immediately, standing behind the counter cheerfully serving up ice cream cones.
His heart clambering instantly into his throat, thirteen years fell away in a single breathless heartbeat, amplified by a profound emotional jolt that he had experienced only one other time in his life – the last time he had seen Patience Walker.
Patience glanced up and, catching his eye, she scrutinized him momentarily. Suddenly fearing that she might have recognized him from their only previous meeting, he glanced furtively away. But it seemed that she did not remember him, thereby affording him a sigh of relief as he awaited his turn in line.
When at length his turn arrived, she asked politely, “May I help you, sir?” and it was in perfect English.
“Yes, please, signora. Could I please have a double dip stracciatela cone?”
“Of course, Mr. James MacAllister,” she replied, displaying the tiniest hint of a triumphant smile.
Double-taking at her, he arched an eyebrow, saying, “It seems my reputation precedes me, signora. How is it that you know my name?”
“Ha,” she blurted out mirthfully, “Everyone in town knows your name. Surely you must know that a man who is clearly not from Italy cannot waltz into a small Italian village and announce that he is looking for a local woman, a single one at that, without rumors spreading like wildfire.”
Embarrassed by his rank amateur skill at sleuthing, Brandt chuckled, responding, “Ah, I see. I should have known what half the men in this town were doing on a Sunday morning outside the church. They were gossiping!”
“Certamente!” she replied ingenuously, but the remainder of her body language remained nonetheless distant.
“Miss, er…I’m afraid you have the better of me,” he replied, uncertain as to what he should say next.
“Margaret Smith, Mr. MacAllister,” she replied supplying him with her hand over the counter.
“James, please call me James,” he responded, but suddenly he blurted in confusion, “Wait a minute, I thought your name was Martina. That’s what everyone said was your name yesterday morning in front of the church.”
“You know how it is. Italians have to change everyone’s name to an Italianized version. So here in Castiglion I’m Martina.”
“Ah, I see,” he responded, one more tiny piece of the labyrinthine puzzle falling into place.
“What brings you to Castiglion looking for me, if I may be so bold?”
“Well, it’s a long story, so let me give you the short one if I may. I’m a professor in the U.S., in Cleveland. I have a friend in New York City. Her name is Barbara, Barbara Moreland. Perhaps you know her?”
At this Margaret slowly tilted her head sideways and, narrowing one eye at him in recognition, she responded quizzically, “You know that I know her. She’s my cousin, sir.”
“Right, I knew that,” he replied, slightly surprised by her lightning-quick perception.
“And?” she queried, now appearing distant at best.
Suddenly put on the defensive, he responded, “And what?” and, rushing onwards to cover his confusion, he added, “Oh, well, it seems that Barbara had a notion that you might still be alive. A few months ago a friend of hers of Italian descent in New York City showed her a photograph taken in Italy of a wedding that involved a distant relation of hers. It seems that her friend had met you once years ago. She thought that the person in the photo bore an amazing resemblance to the person she had met, which was made more amazing by the fact that this acquaintance was known to have perished on 9/11.”
He halted for a moment in order to allow her to take this in, but seeing that she made no response, he continued with his elaborately planned lie, adding, “Well, my friend Barbara was also struck by the resemblance to her former friend Christine, in fact so much so that she could not get the possibility out of her mind that her cousin might be alive. So when Barbara heard that I, her friend, was going on sabbatical in Tuscany this summer, she asked me to check out the person in this photo.”
“Go on,” she replied.
Not knowing what else to say at this point, he responded, “It seems that she was right,” his planned falsehood having run its course. He could nonetheless tell by her minimal reaction that she was worried about something, prompting him to prevaricate, “Is she?”
“Yes, yes, of course she is,” Patience, ergo Christina, ergo Margaret, ergo Martina, responded without so much as a hint of evasiveness.
Momentarily taken aback by such a direct admission on her part, Brandt paused, replying, “Sooo, where do we go from here?” her candor having made him clearly uncertain what to say or do next.
“Let me ask you a question, Mr. MacAllister,” she said.
“James,” he offered once again.
“James. Have we ever met before?”
“No, not to my knowledge,” he lied.
“Are you sure? You seem familiar to me somehow.”
“Margaret, Christine, or Martina, whoever you are, I feel certain that I would remember meeting someone so lovely as you.”
“Oh, that’s good,” she responded sarcastically, “Let’s try flattery - utterly a waste of time with me, Mr. MacAllister.”
“Point taken. Flattery not to be repeated,” he replied grimly.
At his directness it was her turn to be surprised. Uttering a small victory laugh, she continued, “Okay, cut the crap out, James, or whoever you are. Cut to the chase. Why in hell have you come six thousand miles to find me?”
“What! I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he responded, doing his best job of acting. “I told you, since I’m here on sabbatical, Barbara asked me to look you up.”
“Alright, I will accept that extremely lame answer for the time being. Look, I’m closing up shop. Perhaps you’d like to go for a stroll with me, Mr. MacAllister, er, James?”
“It would be a pleasure. Chris-, er…I guess you’re incognito, so I’d better stick with Martina, right?”
“Yes, please. I will explain a bit more to you if you will walk with me.” They started down the street, she immediately inquiring, “First of all, who the hell are you, James MacAllister?”
“What do you mean?” he responded, completely put off guard.
“Come clean, tell me about yourself,” she replied.
“Oh, that’” he answered, regaining his composure. I’m a Scot. You gathered that much already. I was born and raised in Edinburgh, where I went to university. I am now on faculty in the mathematics department at Case Western University, in Cleveland.
“What about your family?” she responded.
“I have no living family, except for my Aunt Winnie, Winnie Sutherland, who lives in Stirling.”
“Stirling, where’s that?” she asked.
“In Scotland, north of Edinburgh,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, you seem to know a bit about me, so I felt I needed to even the score, as they say,” she replied.
And that is how it started. They strolled aimlessly, conversing amiably as they did so. Martina asked him to refrain from divulging anything to Barbara for the time being. Well aware that she was in a very complicated situation that could only be helped if he somehow could gain her trust, he of course acquiesced. He would have to tell her about Barbara eventually, but all in good time, or at least so he hoped.
Two Nights Later
Unable to bring himself to stay away any longer, Brandt returned, and once again she allowed him to walk with her after she closed up shop for the evening. Things progressed ever so slowly, but over the course of the next few weeks, Patience gradually allowed Brandt into her world. Eventually daring to pry a bit, Brandt inquired one evening, “So, how did you come to own an ice cream parlor here in Castiglion?”
Eyeing him suspiciously, and perceiving no ulterior motive, she replied, “It’s pretty simple, really. I needed an excuse to have a work visa in Italy. I moved here in 2001, but I had no way of obtaining a work permit. I was sort of hanging out in Florence, where I eventually started giving tours to Galileo’s homes. As a result,
I met this American professor who was running a study abroad program out of the study center here in Castiglion. He invited me to come here and help him out, including offering to pay me cash under the table. I didn’t make much, but they provided room and board as well, and that was sufficient to keep me going until I could figure out the way things work here in Italy.”
“How long did you do that?”
“A year and a half,” she responded. “But eventually, I felt a need to have something more permanent. Somewhat serendipitously, the city council of this little town embarked on a ludicrous urban renewal program. Apprised of this, I approached the director of the study center and asked for his help in finding permanent employment here in Castiglion. He in turn approached the mayor of Castiglion, and it developed that they were searching proactively for ‘business entrepreneurs’. I use that term loosely of course, because by that time I only had about a thousand dollars saved up. Miraculously, that is exactly the amount that they required on trust from me in order to support the financing for the Gelato Capri.
To make matters even more enticing, the mayor volunteered to support my application for a work visa. It was really quite simple when I finally decided to try it, but of course, I had to live here for a year and a half in near poverty before I developed sufficient connections with the locals to pull it off. Frankly, it took me nearly that long to become completely fluent in Italian, but now I’ve been here so long that it has become my home.”
“I say, what a fabulous story,” Brandt replied. “You’ve done well, Martina. I am quite impressed.”
“Thank you,” she responded curtly.
Midsummer
By now Brandt suspected they had become somewhat more than friends, but not quite anything approaching what could be termed entangled. Still, one evening he managed to convince her to come to Arezzo for dinner. They ate at a small restaurant just off the main square. It was a lovely evening, and sometime after the main course their hands touched quite by accident. She immediately drew hers back, exclaiming, “Don’t touch me!”
“Sorry. I assure you, it wasn’t on purpose, Martina,” he replied defensively.
Obviously conflicted, she murmured, “Oh, damn it. I’m sorry, James. I like you, I really do. You must know that.”
“Yes, of course I do,” he responded, “But we’re just friends. That’s what you meant, right?”
“No, no, that’s not it at all, you idiot,” she rejoined, and it was clear that she was contemplating her next move. “It’s just that, well, I’m afraid. That’s all.”
Feigning confusion, he asked, “Afraid of what?”
“Damn you, James MacAllister, I’m afraid of you! I’m afraid of commitment. Hell, the truth is, I’m probably afraid of everything!”
Realizing that they were on the verge of a possible breakthrough, he probed, “I understand that something is holding you back, Martina. I’ve known that all along, but what is it? Is there anything that I can do to help?”
At this she emitted a decided, “Hummphh,” and, accompanied with a self-deprecating laugh, she followed it with, “Well, yeah, right. There is one obvious thing that you could help me with. I’m a virgin, you see.”
Accidentally knocking his wine glass over at this entirely unanticipated revelation, Brandt exclaimed in shock, “What? What the hell! What am I, just some token vessel?”
“No! No…” she responded and, suppressing laughter for fear of insulting him further, she defended, “That’s not what I meant at all. That was definitely NOT a proposition. And I’m actually not a virgin, at least not technically, but I haven’t been in a relationship since high school. And to tell you the truth, that wasn’t much of one. So what I’m trying to tell you is – I’m not very good at this. I mean, oh for God’s sake, I confess that I’m basically an amateur at relationships.”
This was it, the breakthrough that he had been hoping for and awaiting for two months. Suddenly unable to restrain himself, he reached impulsively for her hand and responded, “If you think that admission is going to change how I feel about you, you are dead wrong.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” she replied with obviously contrived humor.
The tension of the moment having been momentarily abated, they allowed themselves a shared giggle. There followed a momentary silence, each fearful of damaging the magic of the moment.
Brandt took the plunge first and, attempting the direct approach, he volunteered, “I want you, Martina. No, I’m sorry, that’s not quite right. What I mean to say is - I need you!”
Smiling daringly at this, she hazarded, “That is precisely what I needed to hear from you, you idiot.” Summarily grabbing her purse, she blurted, “Come on, let’s go to your place. It’s time for me to grow up.”
The Following Weekend
Brandt was elated. Their relationship having reached a new plateau, Patience agreed to take the weekend off from work. Arriving in Assisi on a gloriously sunny day, they shared the sites in one of Italy’s most timeless settings, ending their evening with a romantic dinner. The following morning at breakfast she blurted, “There’s something I need to tell you, James.”
Anticipating this moment, he carefully placed his coffee on the table and responded with contrived naiveté, “Yes? What is it?”
She now offered, “I’m running away, you see.”
“Yes, of course, you’re running away from your youth, I expect. Aren’t we all?”
Frowning at his rather foolish sounding response, she contradicted, “It’s not that. It’s something bigger.”
“Oh, like what?”
“I’m running away from an event that occurred many years ago, when I was quite young.”
“I see…” he answered patiently.
“You see, I got into trouble,” she said in apparent misery.
“Trouble, what sort of trouble?” he probed.
“I did something terrible, and then my mother died as a result of my actions.”
“Ah, so you have a skeleton in your closet,” he observed.
“Yes. Yes, I guess I do. It’s been tucked away inside me for so long that I can’t seem to live without it. I mean, it’s like I actually revel in my own misery. Like I’m punishing myself for what I did, and all the while, I’m enjoying my own punishment.”
“That sounds serious,” Brandt responded. “But now that you’ve admitted it, why don’t you deal with it. Once you know the problem, the solution isn’t far behind.”
“That’s just it, James. In this case it is still not possible to move on.”
“What? Why? Why can’t you begin to move on?”
“Because I’m being pursued by someone that I injured,” she responded.
“Injured? I don’t understand,” he lied.
“I was forced to do something against my will, and I escaped from my captors, but not before I hurt one of them. So they are after me,” she responded.
Aware that he was now a single admission away from full disclosure, he inquired pointedly, “Captors? Exactly who is after you, Patience?”
Eyes flashing abruptly, she bellowed, “What!”
Shocked by her immediate change of tenor, he jerked back in his seat, blurting, “What? What did I say?”
Eyeing him menacingly, she exclaimed, “You said ‘Patience’!” and it was obvious that she was furious. She stared a moment longer and, realization creeping in, she cut loose at him with, “You bastard! Nobody has called me that in thirteen years! What the hell is going on here? Did Barbara spill it to you? No, no, it couldn’t be that. She wouldn’t divulge my real name to anyone.” Suddenly, she leaned forward and slapped him ferociously across his face.
Wincing in pain, he drew his hand to his face, silence his only hope.
She now exclaimed between gritted teeth, “It’s time for the truth, you son-of-a-bitch!”
Continuing to massage his by now swollen face, he managed to reply forlornly, ??
?I’m so sorry, Patience. I assure you, I am here to help you. The truth is, I’ve been helping you all along.”
“Damn! Do you realize what you’ve done? Just when I was starting to trust again, you came along and destroyed it. Oh God, how long must I keep paying for my lone transgression? Will I ever atone for it?” and, sobbing uncontrollably, she began dissolving before his very eyes.
“Please, Patience, please don’t cry. It’s not like you think. I can explain,” and with this he reached forward to touch her arm.
Tearing her arm away from him, she exclaimed, “Don’t you touch me! Don’t you dare touch me. You have no right to ever speak to me again.” At this she raised her chin and, glaring at him disdainfully with an expression of sheer loathing, she commanded, “Now, take me home to Castiglion, James MacAllister, or whatever your real name is. And don’t you dare speak a single word to me on the way.”
He followed her bidding, but when they finally arrived back in Castiglion two hours later, he could not keep himself from choking out, “Goodbye, Patience.”
Turning to face him, she expelled between gritted teeth, “I don’t want to ever see your face again. Goodbye.” And with that she stalked off into the noonday sunshine.
A Week Later
Unable to endure it any longer, back Brandt went the following Saturday evening, hanging around outside the ice cream parlor until closing time. When she came out to lock up, he approached her cautiously, saying, “I know what you said to me last weekend. Believe me, Martina, I took your warning seriously, but I must speak with you. Please, it is a matter of grave importance.”
“Alright,” she replied. “Five minutes, no more. Walk with me, please.”
He fell into stride with her, the faint waft of her perfume prompting fleeting memories. Finding it difficult to concentrate under the circumstances, he nonetheless girded himself and commenced with the lines that he had rehearsed, “I’m afraid you may be in danger Patience, er, Martina. Damn, I have no idea what to call you.”
“It doesn’t matter, since you won’t be seeing me again after tonight,” she responded distantly.
“Whatever,” he shot back, but finding it difficult to match her apparent lack of concern, he reverted to script, “Look, the FBI has been in touch with me. They’ve been after Al-Wadi for years. I assume that is why you’re hiding out here in Italy.”
“What? What the…you know the entire story!”
“Yes, of course I do, Patience. I met you in Lincoln. I am Brandt MacCauley.”
Turning in shock to face him directly, she studied his face carefully momentarily and murmured, “Ah, yes, I see it now…older, of course, perhaps more mature…even, shall I say…a bit harder.”
“Touché,” he replied morosely, “I suppose I deserved that.”
“Oh, I’ve only just begun, Dr. MacCauley,” she hissed, “But go on. This is going to be something!”
“Yes, well, I suppose I should start at the beginning…”
“Please do!”
Eyeing her disconsolately, he stammered, “Uh…sooo…let me see…Yes, of course – I was in Chicago when the bombing occurred. That made no impression on me, but when the press announced the very next day that Al-Wadi had been injured, also in Las Vegas, I immediately smelled a rat. I hacked into the Lido Hotel’s security system, and I located the footage of you going into the hotel. Of course, I knew right away that it was you.”
“How could you have known that? I was wearing a full berka.”
“It was those green eyes of yours, Patience. I’ve never in all my life seen another pair of eyes like yours.”
Ignoring his lame attempt, she interjected, “Go on.”
“Yes, of course. So I started attempting to follow your trail, and I’ve been on it ever since.”
“What, for more than a decade?”
“Yes, Patience, just so…”
“Exactly why have you been doing all of this, Dr. MacCauley?”
“I hoped to protect you, of course. You shall never be safe until Mr. Al-Wadi is neutralized. And now the FBI is attempting to bring charges against him for kidnapping you.”
“Why would they do that after such a lengthy period of time?” she replied in dismay.
“Because everything else they’ve tried to hang on him has failed. And remember, Patience, you’re dead to the world, including the FBI. They think your case is perfect because Al-Wadi can’t kill the witness this time, since she’s already dead,” and at this he hazarded a sidelong glance at her, adding accusingly, “But you’re not dead, are you?”
“Oh, my God, I just realized - you gave me a cock and bull story, didn’t you!” she spat out derisively.
“About what?” he asked in bewilderment.
“Barbara didn’t have a picture of me. You found me, didn’t you! You’re the one who has been following me all along, aren’t you.”
“Yes,” he admitted, “Yes, I am, Patience. That is a fact, but it gets worse, much worse. I am sorry to tell you that Barbara is dead. She took a drug overdose three months ago.”
Gaping in utter disbelief, all she could seem to say was, “No! Oh, Barb!”
“I think they murdered her. They caught on to your trail to New York City years ago, but they thought that you had died on 9/11, just as I had. But when the Feds started threatening to bring kidnapping charges against Al-Wadi, he set his network to work again, checking to see if perhaps the whole 9/11 thing had been a setup. So eventually his associates went after Barb, and they killed her.”
“Damn! Poor Barb. God, I tried really hard to keep this from happening, but it seems that everything I do hurts someone that I love.” She paused for a moment and, peering at him in newfound fear, she asked, “Do you think that she told them anything?”
“No, definitely not.”
“What makes you say that?”
“For the simple reason that you’d probably be dead by now.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she observed, “So how did you find me?”
“It was Barb’s doing. She left a note addressed to me with Jennifer, to be opened only in the event of her death. It seems she always knew that she might get caught up in it. So Jennifer sent me the note.”
“What did it say?” she queried.
“It was only a hunch, but she figured that you had faked your death on 9/11 because she couldn’t find your barrette.”
“That damned barrette!” She exclaimed, “I should have gotten rid of that thing years ago!”
“But you couldn’t, could you?”
Now weeping inconsolably for her lost cousin Barbara, she moaned “No.”
“It’s your Scarlet Letter,” he replied forlornly.
“Yes, I suppose it is,” she sobbed and, pulling it from her pocket, she handed it to him. He examined it carefully for a moment, then handed it back to her. Taking it, she observed, “It’s the only reminder I have of the horror of that day. So I somehow can’t let it go.”
“So, Al-Wadi’s men have been following you, too,” he said, stating the obvious. “So far, I’ve managed to stay ahead of them, but I can’t do it forever. One of these days they’re going to beat me to you.”
Patience contemplated and, crossing her arms around her waist, she blurted, “So you helped the FBI to create a case against Al-Wadi using evidence that you had gathered over the years, right?”
“That’s correct, Patience. I figured that I owed it to your memory.”
“But now you seem to have succeeded in doing quite the reverse, Brandt. You have put me back in danger. Al-Wadi’s men have started looking for me again because of the kidnapping charges. They will turn over every rock and discover that I didn’t die on 9/11, and from there it will be just a matter of time before they find me.”
“Yes,” he replied succinctly, “And that’s why I had to come – to warn you. It’s my doing that the FBI has sufficient evidence, so it is my responsibility to try and
protect you.”
“Ha!” she spat out at him. “You’re not the one who has been protecting me all these years. I am!”
“Yes, for which I have nothing but the greatest admiration. As near as I can tell, every single person who ever crossed Al-Wadi is now dead, with the exception of you.”
“Yeah, it’s a good thing I was so careful,” she replied.
“So I’ve been wondering. How did you manage to get a passport?”
“Oh, that was easy. I just went down and got one for Margaret Smith.”
“What? What do you mean, Patience?”
“Well, I checked birth records for New York City, and I found a person who was born the same year as me that was named Margaret Smith. I found her death certificate in another set of records. She died when she was six months old. I did all of that in 1998, before 9/11. Back then there was no Department of Homeland Security, so nobody checked to see if the person who was applying for a passport was deceased. Of course, they do now, but I got in under the wire.
“And I got out of the United States just after 9/11. At that point they didn’t even have magnetic passport readers. They’ve been gradually ramping up the requirements since 9/11. I’ve been keeping track of the background checks that they do, and I realized in 2005 that my passport was going to expire in 2008. I found out that by that point they were planning to implement more stringent checks which would have caught me, so in 2005 I went to the American Consulate in Florence and filed for a replacement passport, reporting that mine had been stolen. At that time they issued replacement passports for a period of one year, at the end of which they issued another one on request that is good for ten years. So I now have three passports.”
Assuming that the other two were of no use to her, Brandt volunteered, “But only one of them is current.”
“I don’t think you get it. It’s not what’s inside the passport that is hard to get, it’s the passport itself. The folder is nearly impossible to counterfeit. That’s why people steal them. Once they have them, they alter the inside.”
“That sounds like it might be hard to do,” Brandt responded naively.
“You think so?” she said, “Try this. Take your passport and open it to the page with your name and photo on it. Then run it through a high quality color printer and see what you get back. You will find that the image is quite good, and that it can be photo-shopped quite easily. You can change the picture, the name, the dates, whatever you need to do.”
Staring at her in wonder, he blubbered inanely, “So you have three passports! I get it - you’re good from now on, Patience.”
“Well, not exactly,” she replied. “Of course, now they read them with either magnetic or laser technology, and they access a data base. I can never go through a passport control with that level of technology. I’m only good so long as it is not run through an electronic reader. They use them now in the United States, so I can’t ever go back there. They also use them at various places all over Europe. In fact, they use them at all ports of entry into the U.S., and they use them at airports in the U.K. But they still don’t use them much in most countries on the continent as long as you’re not going to the U.S. It’s kind of ridiculous. In most places they just open your passport, look at the photo, and if it looks like you, they stamp it and hand it back to you. The only people that they aren’t equipped to screen are the crooks, and of course, me. So I keep all three of my passports ready for quick use in case the need arises. And when I want to use one of them, I just stand in the passport line and make sure that the agent in that line is not running passports through the magnetic or laser card reader.”
“That’s ridiculously simple,” he replied with growing admiration.
“Well, it is for one who is forced by necessity to know,” she replied and, changing the subject, she inquired, “By the way, how did you find me?”
“Good question,” he responded, “Well, as you know, I’m a computer scientist. I guess you could say that I’m a geek. I’ve been obsessed with computers since I was a kid. Of course, they weren’t very powerful twenty-five years ago, but they are now.
“Anyway, I did a lot of hacking over the years looking for you. When I first started thirteen years ago, the state of computing wasn’t good enough to do lots of things that needed to be done, so it took a long time to sort things out. I actually had to go physically in search of you because there were no computer records of the type that I needed at the time. So I looked around in Vegas for you. I had the Lincoln Journal Star photo, and I showed it around. One guy at the Pelican Hotel said that he had seen that hairdo that night. But other than that, it was as if you had completely disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“Photo? What photo?”
“The Journal Star got ahold of a photo of you in that watusi hairdo.”
“What! I had no idea, but now that you mention it, that is a good name for it.”
“Right.”
“Geez, how’d they do that?”
“No idea. It must have been someone working for Al Wadi that took it.”
“Hmmm…” was her only response.
“You did well, Patience. You did really well.”
“Thanks. Go on.”
“So it took me perhaps a month to come around to the assumption that you might have hitched your way out of Las Vegas in order to avoid having any record of where you were going. At that point I started looking at maps, thinking about where you might have hitchhiked to in the hope that you might have gone to somewhere not too far from Vegas and then taken a bus from there. I zeroed in on Phoenix, and voila - I hit pay dirt. I showed your photo in the bus station, and one of the agents recognized you. He informed me that you had bought a ticket to Dallas.
“Unfortunately, it was four long years before I could track you any further because I hadn’t yet developed the necessary software. So I kept furiously writing new software all the time. Eventually, I flew to Dallas and hacked the American Airlines computer system. I found out that you had flown to New York City. That was in the summer of 2001.”
“My, you were a busy boy, and a sneaky one at that,” she volunteered with a slightly deprecating grin.
“Yeah, but I was worried about you. I was afraid that Al-Wadi might be on your trail. Anyway, he would have had to have had a pretty sharp bunch of associates to get as far as I did by that point in time.”
“And you have a high opinion of yourself as well!” she added with a derisive smirk.
Ignoring this, he inquired, “So I’ve been wondering for thirteen years. How did you get away that night?”
“Oh, that,” she replied, “That was a real mess, I’ll tell you. So immediately after the bombing that afternoon they took me to Al-Wadi’s office. They stripped me naked and laid me out on the sofa. I was quite embarrassed, so I kind of stretched out on my face and acted like I was still out of it. I could hear Al-Wadi talking to his associate, his name was Wassim as I recall. They didn’t think that I could hear them, and Al-Wadi told Wassim that he was going to rape and torture me. So I knew I had to do something quick.”
“Wait,” he interjected, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why was he planning to rape and torture you?”
“Oh, that. Well, when they took me to the Lido, they told me to deliver the bomb to Room 403. Look, I wasn’t stupid – I knew exactly what it was. I figured they knew the layout of the hotel, and they wanted the bomb to be planted so that it would cause maximum destruction. So if you check, I’ll bet you’ll find that Room 403 is directly above the lobby.”
“Whoa!” he expounded. “That would have killed a lot of people!”
“Exactly,” she agreed, “So when I walked inside, I went straight for the elevator, as I’d been instructed, but instead of going up, I went down. I figured I only had seconds to get that thing planted somewhere less dangerous, because I was certain they intended to blow me u
p with the bomb. So I went down to the third level of the parking garage and I flung it into a stairwell. Then I yanked the berka off and ran like hell. The bomb went off seconds later, and unfortunately, when I got back out on the street, Al-Wadi’s men caught up with me.”
“So when we got back to the hotel, Wassim gave me a drink, setting it down on the table next to me. I was pretty sure it was drugged, so I waited till they weren’t looking, and I poured it onto the floor. After Wassim left, Mr. Al-Wadi came over to check on me and, seeing the glass empty and me motionless, he assumed that I had drunk whatever it was and was passed out. The idiot probably thought that I was no problem, seeing as how I was naked and drugged. So I put my finger down my throat while he wasn’t looking and threw up on him. He said something like ‘Shit!’ and turned around to clean himself up. Seeing my chance, I grabbed a big marble ashtray on the table and I hit him across the face as hard as I could.”
She halted momentarily and, the events of that long-ago day clearly still disturbing her, she added, “I raced down the hallway and ducked into the janitor’s closet, where I found a worker’s smock. Once the coast was clear, I ran out onto the street and took off. I knew that silly smock wouldn’t cut it, so when I saw the Equus club a block away, I crept in the backstage door. The cacophony backstage was a perfect cover, so I was able to sneak into the girls’ dressing room. I stole some of the dancers’ street clothes, and within a couple of minutes I was back out the door.
“I walked down the street; I have no idea where I was. That’s the one and only time I’ve been to Vegas, and by then it was nighttime. But there’s a lot going on there at night, you know, and I blended right in. My hairdo was just another expected oddity in a decidedly odd city. I walked a couple of blocks and went into one of the big casinos. Vegas is probably the easiest place in the world to get money. I didn’t have a red cent, and I didn’t have a credit card, but I had my card number memorized. So I went up to one of the chip windows and gave them my credit card number. I got two hundred dollars in chips, and then I went to another window and cashed them in. In retrospect, I wish I’d gotten more cash, but at the moment I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be to make a clean getaway. I mean, I wasn’t stupid. I knew that my trail of credit card usage was traceable, but I figured I’d be long gone from Vegas before anyone checked my record of usage. What I didn’t think about was the trail it would later leave each time I used it, that is, if I was actually stupid enough to ever use it again.
“So anyway, I had cash at that point, and I knew that I had to get out of town quick - before they realized that I was gone. I decided not to try the bus station, because I figured my hairdo would be too easy to follow. So I took a taxi to the airport and I went to the parking lot and looked around for a vehicle in short term parking with Arizona plates. I found a pickup truck with one of those plastic covers over the truck bed, and I climbed in. Pretty soon a couple of guys came along and got in, and off we went. The truck drove a couple of hours and pulled in at a truck stop. I climbed out of the bed of the truck and went into the truck stop cafe. Don’t ask me why, but I didn’t think to do something about my hair. Suddenly everyone who saw me was staring at me. Two hours out of Vegas, and the world had returned to normal.
“By then it must have been about two in the morning, so I had breakfast and waited for the sun to come up. After daybreak I hitch-hiked to Phoenix. You know the rest, I think. Oh, and right after I got on the bus I realized that I couldn’t sleep with my hair sticking out like that, so I took off the barrette that was making it stand up, and amazingly, my hair all sort of smoothed out and hung down naturally so that you could hardly tell that two thirds of my head had been shaved. So I stopped standing out so much.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t take the barrette off until after you bought the bus ticket. I don’t think that I ever would have found you.”
Comprehension sinking in, she observed, “Really? What a coincidence.”
He nodded agreement, continuing, “And if you hadn’t kept that barrette, I’m sure I never would have found you in Italy, because Barb never would have figured out that you were still alive after 9/11.”
Pausing for a moment, he eyed her with admiration. “That is quite an amazing story, Patience. I’ve always thought that you were lucky to get away, but now I realize that it was more skill than luck. You probably saved your own life that night.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“What made you think to do all of that?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was just brought up in difficult circumstances.”
“One other question,” Brandt suggested.
“What is it,” she replied
“What made you leave New York?”
“Oh, that. Two days before 9/11 my credit card company called me. They said that someone had hacked into my account. I was pretty sure it was Al-Wadi’s guys, so I moved up my plans to disappear.”
“That was me,” he replied tersely.
Startled, she blurted, “What?”
“I hacked your credit card account. By that time I knew that you were in New York City. I was following hunches and, using my latest pattern recognition algorithm, I searched quite a few different companies looking for photos that matched. Eventually, after searching at least a hundred companies, I tried Starbuck’s, figuring they must have lots of employees in New York City. A photo matched up with the only one that I had of you, and since it did in fact look like you to me, I hacked your personnel file and got your address. Unfortunately, you had given them a false address, so that when I looked you up, it came up negative. So then I used the name you had on record at Starbuck’s and I searched credit card companies. A name came back that was in Greenwich Village. I was on my way to your apartment that morning on 9/11.”
Staring balefully at him, she observed, “My God, all these years I had thought that in some strange twisted way Al-Wadi had saved my life that day, but it was you, Brandt. You saved my life on 9/11. If you hadn’t hacked my credit card account I wouldn’t have left New York City that very day. Instead, I would have died instantly when the first plane hit the North Tower.”
“So you took the 4 A.M. Amtrak train to Boston that morning,” he put in knowingly.
Arching one eyebrow in surprise, she blurted, “How on earth did you know that?”
“I told you – pattern recognition. When Barbara’s note explained to me several months ago that the barrette was missing, I began to consider ways that you could have gotten out of the City that morning. I doubted that you would have taken a flight out, so I concentrated on buses and trains. Your name wasn’t on any of the passenger lists, so I reasoned that you had once again changed your name. There were only a few thousand people who got out before the attacks that morning, and I simply reduced it down to a handful of women by a process of elimination. I figured that you were trying to leave the country, so you had to have a passport under your new assumed name. I therefore hacked the TSA files and I ran my pattern recognition algorithm with the names on my list, and your passport photo came back. It was actually quite easy.”
“Easy!” she replied emphatically, “Easy for you, but it was a damned mess for me.”
“What happened?” he queried.
“You already know. I got stuck in Boston. Nothing was flying for a week. So the ticket that I had to fly out that afternoon from Logan Airport was cancelled. I had been saving every penny that I could, but I wasn’t exactly rich at that point. So I booked into the YWCA and started calling American Airlines every day. It took two hours to get through the first few days. Finally, after five days they started getting their act together, and they honored my ticket. I flew to Heathrow eleven days after 9/11. Boy, it was weird. The airport that day was like a mausoleum. As I recall, two of the 9/11 flights originated from there. So security was like a war zone. There were more security ag
ents than there were passengers. Anyway, I got out and made it to London, and from there I made my way to Italy as circuitously as I could. Obviously even that wasn’t enough, since you found me. You must be a master spy or something.”
“Actually, I’m sure you did that part well, Patience. I found you in Italy by another means,” he replied.
“Okay, I’m listening. How did you do that part?”
“Well, tracking you to London was easy. I figured you were planning to fly out of the U.S., so I simply hacked the flight records for the next couple of weeks after 9/11, and the name that you used to get out of New York City on Amtrak came up for your flight on AA to Heathrow. So I knew that you had gone to Europe. The rest was simple.”
“Go ahead,” she responded in apparent exasperation.
“Well, I had your college transcript…”
“What? How did you get that?”
“Easy, I asked Barbara to get it years ago as your next of kin. By then you were dead, remember?”
Patience eyed him with obvious resentment, but as she said nothing, he continued, “So I knew from your transcript that you had taken two semesters of Italian at NSU. I figured that made it a very good possibility that you had gone on to Italy from London. So I started trying out my pattern recognition software on websites in Italy. Okay, that part wasn’t so easy after all. Italy has been slow to adopt web-based technology, but most of the newspapers have been forced to for simple reasons of economy. So eventually, I think it took a couple of weeks, I tried some small town giornales, and a picture came up that looked like you. It was a photo of you at a wedding in Castiglion Fiorentino. I had never heard of Castiglion, so I had to get out a map and find out where it was. That was three months ago. I immediately started making travel plans. And there you have it.”
She stared at him for a moment and asked, “Just one more question, Brandt. Why did you do it? Why did you keep looking for me all these years?”
Aware that this was a question that demanded complete honesty, he glanced off in the distance and replied wistfully, “A long long time ago, when I was a little boy, my Aunt Winnie said to me, ‘patience is the parent of compassion, and compassion is born within the heart’. I confess that at the time I didn’t quite comprehend what she meant. But now I think I do.” He glanced at her briefly, and he could see that her eyes were glistening.
She stared off into the rapidly growing darkness within the valley below, and after a few moments she murmured, “I’m tired of running, Brandt. Can you help me?”
“Surely you know that I will do anything for you, Patience. You name it and I shall do it for you. What do you have in mind?”
“I suppose that I should ask you first,” she replied. “What do you propose?”
“Well, I’ve thought about it plenty. Here is the thing. So far I am the only person who knows you are even alive, much less where you are. I doubt very seriously that they will find you here, but if you will allow me, I shall inform the FBI of your whereabouts. They in turn will keep a watch on Al-Wadi and his associates’ movements. If anything untoward happens that looks like they might be onto you, they will notify you and put you in the witness protection program. But you must know that ultimately it will come out that you are alive. Then you will need FBI protection around the clock. Heck, I may even need it myself.”
“Oh? Why you, Brandt?”
“Because my contact at the bureau has told me that if they ever bring charges, I shall be a witness to the events of that night, that’s why.”
Stroking her chin, she volunteered thoughtfully, “That makes sense.” She paced to and fro for a few moments, obviously deep in thought. Then she gave her reply, “Okay, I’ll do it. I really think that I have no choice in the matter. As you said, you found me, so they will, too, eventually. Tell your friend, and I will expect to hear from him at the appropriate time, okay?”
“Got it,” Brandt replied morosely.
The conversation having now run its full course, neither of them could think of anything further to say. Resigned to the reality that his one and only chance with her had unfortunately slipped away, Brandt simply gazed at her, taking in his last few moments with what little relish that he could.
She glared at him and, showing not the least bit of interest, she whispered between gritted teeth, “Brandt, don’t you dare darken my doorstep ever again. Do you hear me?” And she said this last with a stone-faced look of finality.
“Yes, of course,” he murmured disconsolately, “I knew that you would say that, Patience. And believe me, I understand. I do have one last request, however.”
“And what might that be?” she queried flatly.
“If you ever find yourself needing me, send me the barrette.”
“Fat chance,” she murmured and, turning on her heel, she strode briskly into the darkness.