"I should have called before traveling, but I had a problem in London striking up a correct phone number. I've only gotten it now, by finally tracking down a live voice at the church where her service was held. The minister gave me your number. And I'm at Kennedy Airport."
That was only about three hours from here. My heart was beating so hard it was giving me an earache. "Please feel free to come now," I said.
"But I understand from someone staying at your house that you're under the weather. I'm sorry to hear that."
Don't go home to Europe now. "But ... I'll wait up for you. They don't make visitors leave at this hospital."
My hand was shaking. My whole arm, actually. I felt weak up to my shoulders. I really had no proof at all that he was my father. I just assumed it. At the moment, I really didn't care what he thought. I just had a powerful, irrational wish to belong to someone.
"Any good hotels down your way?" he asked.
I mumbled a couple and said, "I'm afraid all the beds at my house are taken right now." He didn't have to know the Ebermans were forced to be there. He could think I had friends.
"Don't wait up for me," he said. "Get some rest. I'll see you tomorrow, how is that? I have to brace up for hospital visits, I'm afraid. After your mum's injuries from some of our wild escapades, I'm almost phobic of the places. But you'll be a great excuse to try once again to overcome that."
I said quickly that I would most likely be released in the morning, so to call before he came. I handed the phone back to Jon, who had been standing over me and listening with some satisfaction.
No matter how badly I felt, I didn't want to drop off to sleep with all the questions running through my head. Could Jeremy Ireland fill in the holes for me? How on earth did Aleese hurt her arm so badly that she gave up living? Was he my father? What happened in Mogadishu?
I started to tell the guys that he would come in the morning and they could leave now, thank you very much. But I was out of breath in some strange way—like I was breathing but the worsening throbs in my head were absorbing all the oxygen. My hands and feet felt tingly, but in the mess of hot chills, I couldn't do anything but lie there and huff. I knew it was Owen coming through my door, in spite of the mask, but his presence here made so little sense I just stared.
"What's up?" Dempsey asked.
"Rain's in the emergency room," he said without a drop of energy in his voice. "She's got this headache from hell, and maybe half an hour ago, this blood started running out of her ear."
I shut my eyes as he moved toward me and told myself I had dreamed it. It's amazing how a strange thought can come so clear when your mind is completely out of whack. I told myself quite plainly that I was pulling a trick on myself that I'd learned in sophomore psych, which was to take your own pain and suffering and project it on to someone else. My ear was bleeding.
Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was my eyes, because the tears that would hardly fall ten minutes ago made little tickly feelings as they streamed down my cheeks. And if Rain was in the emergency room, why was Dempsey saying right beside me, "Oh Jesus, get the nurse!"
I just needed to look good when my father showed up tomorrow. I needed to look like one of my Barbies, with my hair tucked neatly in a French twist as I searched for the perfect handbag. I needed to be perfect. I just needed to sleep...
THIRTY
SHAHZAD HAMDANI
FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 2002
7:05 A.M.
FRIDAY, I WAKE to a bright and sunny American morning. I do not feel tired, despite that Hodji has told me I will have incredible jet lag through the weekend. It comes to my memory immediately why I had attended school yesterday instead of resting at Aunt Alika's house until Monday. Inas. She is not shy like the girls from Pakistan, and coming from Beth Israel Hospital the day I arrived, she had talked quickly and with excitement.
"You like math, don't you? I signed you up for the math club! Friday we are taking a field trip to the Einstein Museum in New Jersey! But you have to come to school on Thursday to get permission slips from your afternoon teachers..." The rest of her rapid English is lost on me entirely, as I grow excited about seeing things belonging to this Albert Einstein. Yesterday, she spoke to my teachers for me. My permissions are ready.
I rise with my insides smiling, but as I look out the window, I remember more. Inas mentioned late yesterday after we leave him in the cafeteria that Tyler Ping is in math club. Uh-oh.
If Tyler did capture my screen last night and he is a friend of Catalyst, then I want to speak to Tim before I spend a whole afternoon with Tyler. That he could be a friend of Catalyst seems very incredible. Yet I cannot dismiss that Catalyst could now know about Tim and me.
I reach for the cell phone USIC had given me. But there are no calls, no numbers for me to follow backward.
I take the easy way out. As we get off the bus to school, I simply disappear. I figure that I will explain something later—that I got called in to work or something. Tim can help me with my lies, but first I have to get to him.
I go for an extralong stroll toward what I think is work, comforted by the sun's familiar presence as I pass by apartments, then houses, then bigger houses, then huge houses. The sidewalks are smooth, white squares, and the road is black cake. I have not seen a lawn up close before today, and at one huge yard, I stop and pull some green threads and smell them. Aunt Alika has told me that in the spring American grass turns very, very green, and I have seen such pictures on the Internet. I think it is silky and tastes sweeter than the dune grass of home.
Nearly three hours have passed since I left the school, and I am elated over my new asthma medication for enabling me to walk without wheezing—farther than I have in years. As I approach Trinitron, I think I will simply wait around until someone from USIC shows up. But I don't have to wait at all. A car comes around the corner, pulls up beside me, and the passenger door opens. I recognize a woman from my brief squad meeting in New York on Wednesday. Her name is Miss Susan.
"Get in," she says.
I lower myself slowly into the passenger seat, and she is pulling away from the curb before I can finish closing the door.
"Where have you been?" she asks. "D'you forget to go to school today?"
I am confused. "You look for me at the school?"
"We told you in our meeting we don't have the manpower to watch over you," she says, putting on her blinker and turning down a side street. "We bugged your phones, though. Call it part of USIC's speedy screening process. A technician happened to catch the absentee message that came through from the school. We thought you might have, um ... gotten yourself lost."
"Not lost," I inform her. "I walk to here because of a problem at the school."
She picks up her cell phone and presses a button. "It's me, Michael. I've got him. He says he had problems at school and decided not to go."
I think she has misunderstood me, but it is confusing, because her words are accurate. After Michael the Superior speaks to her, she glances at me. "You have to go to school, even if the dog ate your homework. It's the law. Didn't you know that?"
"Yes...," I say quickly. "But you see. There is a boy ... supposed to go to Einstein Museum with math club. And I think he is friend of Catalyst. I want to ask Tim before I am to speak to this boy."
Her neck spins toward me, and she loses her place in the driving lane. She relays this information on to Michael as she pulls into an even smaller side street.
"His name is Tyler Ping," I continue. "He sat behind me last night at work ... maybe captured my screen. He left with Catalyst. Tim is already gone."
"What'd we tell you to do if you felt unsafe?"
I squirm in frustration. "You give me cell phone but you fight about numbers."
She groans. "We're suddenly inundated with problems in other areas. Could you have stayed out of trouble for four days, at least? You gave us a good scare while taking your little walking tour. You should have stayed home where we could find you. You can't just drop
into the black hole like that. Understand?"
Go home and do what? To be alone with a computer is, for me, like being a glutton left alone with the refrigerator.
Miss Susan chatters on with Mr. Michael in her brash English. I grow beyond annoyed, because if I were in Pakistan, I would be free to find out who Omar is by now. I could do what I want and find out many more helpful things. I feel like one rupee in Uncle's dirty jar of rupees back in his dirty office closet. If this is sophisticated American teamwork, then it seems counterproductive.
"He's looking into this Tyler Ping," Miss Susan says as she snaps shut her phone. "I'm dubious. I've never heard of him. He's an upperclassman?"
"Yes."
"High school kid ... I'm real, real dubious."
I feel my face turning toward her, and it is hot underneath. "Maybe you underestimate him. And me. That is a shame. Maybe I go home now."
She has turned off the engine and reaches for the key, rolling her eyes a bit. "You want me to drive you back to your aunt's? I've got six places for every hour today."
"I want to go home to Pakistan ... where I am free to be man."
She doesn't turn on the engine after all, but she stares, and I sense a little more humility, or more compassion, perhaps. "You're doing a lot for us, Shahzad. A lot more than you realize."
"That is ... nice thing to say, thank you." But I wish she would not tell me what I do and do not realize. "I did much more at home. Hodji does not tell you all. That is fine. I do not want to make notice of myself. I just want ... to put my fingers to keypad and feel my room to think," I try to explain.
Hodji had been very vague about my background to the Americans, saying no one on the new squad needed to know I was "the Kid" from Newsweek. I cannot quite understand his reasoning, but I have heard Roger say many times that with the agents, it is better for the left hand not to know what the right hand is doing. No one can betray the rest that way, he says.
So, I am surprised when she keeps staring and finally says, "You're that legend, aren't you? That track 'n' translate prodigy that the FBI turned up in the Middle East." She is asking because one squad member put two and two together during our meeting and asked the same question. Hodji was there and refused to answer. He should have lied or told the truth. Now she is curious, and I am frustrated.
"I am not Middle Eastern. Pakistan is not part of the Middle East any more than you are part of Canada." I manage not to roll my eyes at American ignorance over the rest of the world's geography. But I do confess, "I was helping my father. That is all."
She watches me more, and I squirm, feeling I will never grow accustomed to American women's unabashed gaze. "Yes, Hodji said your parents ... passed away? Is that right?"
"Yes."
"I'm sorry. You must miss them."
Her tone has turned sympathetic. I try to remember if Hodji also told me not to discuss my father. We had been so focused on v-spying just before we left Pakistan that much was left unclear to me. I think that perhaps Hodji had told me that, but I cannot see why USIC should not know I am related to their great technology specialist, and I decide I will tell her what she should not glaze over.
"My father was a very important subcontractor for the FBI," I say. "He make very good v-spy, first in Karachi, then New York City. Plus, they bring him tapes of wiretaps, and he can translate the Indo-European languages for the agents. Then they understand terrorists."
"Are you talking about Ashad Ali Hamdani?" Her whisper is surprised.
I nod with more confidence.
"Ashad Ali Hamdani was your father?"
"Correct."
"You're kidding."
I don't know why she would accuse me of this. "And he die in his asleep. Of the gas—"
"Yes, we all know that name and that tragic accident. I just didn't associate you with that Hamdani. It's a common name. Wow. I've heard 'the Kid' stories. And I've heard of Ashad Ali Hamdani. I just never put them together."
"No one is supposed to know over here that we are related," I say. Then I ask in confusion, "But it is all right for the squad to know, yes?"
She keeps staring and does not answer right away. I feel she is searching behind my eyes for something I cannot perceive ... and perhaps I have made a mistake in telling her about my father. But I cannot understand why. She snaps to alertness when the phone rings again. "Hi, Michael ... Gotcha."
She hits her OFF button, and her face has changed. "Don't go back to Pakistan, Kid. Especially not today." She starts the car and pulls out of the spot, making the wheels screech. "We've had a tail on VaporStrike for four days now. He's left his house earlier than usual today. He's gone into Trinitron, and he's online with Omar. We'd like you to tell us what they're saying."
I feel my heart pick up speed along with the car. I am waiting for her to thank me for cutting the school, but she is busy trying to keep us safe as she drives very fast.
THIRTY-ONE
SCOTT EBERMAN
FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 2002
11:35 A.M.
I DON'T KNOW where the thought "Musical Beds" came from as I walked out of intensive care in the morning. My sense of humor was to the left of neg. I had just checked in on Cora. They couldn't have picked some other cube to put her in? Uh-uh. She was in the bed my mother had been in. Now Rain was in Cora's former bed, and because a "contagious" protocol takes precedence over a "gender" protocol, my brother was in the other bed. You wouldn't believe how quickly a hospital snaps into action when the USIC supervisor's daughter is brought in on a stretcher.
It was still hush-hush to outsiders, but the hospital was abuzz. By nine o'clock this morning, there was a budget for "Unknown Infectious Disease." They admitted Owen for observation. The CDC was flying a phlebotomist up from Atlanta, a specialist to study a new batch of our blood every three hours. Dr. Godfrey spent the morning doing nothing but moving from Cora to Rain and my brother and back again. I had stayed out of his way, afraid he would insist on bedding me down if he knew I was symptomatic. I would have gone nuts if I couldn't move around.
I still argued with myself about the possibility of our mystery germ being airborne, but none of Owen's friends had the slightest symptom, and maybe even I'm prone to convenient thinking. I kept reminding myself that I felt fine today, even after having been up all night with Cora, so I was probably okay. I also reasoned that if I wore gloves and sterile scrubs and added a mask, I was entitled to give in to my bad case of the look-arounds.
The hospital really couldn't argue. They hadn't declared the virus airborne; hence, I was not bound by law to adhere to their wishes.
To declare the germ airborne, their protocol would have forced them to contact the media, and for understandable reasons, they were trying hard to avoid that. One reason is the hysteria factor, which means everyone with anything from a hangnail to last night's bean farts would show up in the ER, wanting reassurance that their symptom was unrelated. You have to be relatively sure your infectious disease is airborne to create that much expense, paperwork hell, and torment for the medics.
And I figured the hospital was pretty sure it wasn't airborne. In my mind, USIC thought the germ was waterborne only—and the hospital was listening to them. My evidence was based on oh-so-much USIC presence at the hospital. Imperial and O'Hare showed up at eight in the morning, flashing badges at the front entrance. It must be my intuition that put my look-arounds in the lobby when they arrived. I backed into the gift store and hid behind a magazine as they were led immediately to the elevator. The doors closed, and I watched where they got off. Godfrey's office was on the fourth floor. Rain was on the sixth. The elevator stopped at four.
This had something to do with poisoned water, and if they thought it was the least bit airborne, Godfrey would have been calling my name over the loudspeaker all morning and forcing me into a containment room. But I'd been walking back and forth from the ICU to Owen and Rain for over an hour as USIC met with Godfrey. The nurses attending Owen and Rain wore gloves and masks,
but the door to their room was not even closed.
I stuck my head in warily, scoping for Godfrey, but he was probably still with USIC. My brother was watching television. I looked at Rain's chart rather than at Rain, because I couldn't stand the sight of her scared shitless. Not a Hallmark moment. I looked again at the lines Godfrey had written at 3:00 A.M.: "infected right ear canal" and "ulcerated lesion." That the blood was coming from her ear and not her brain should have given Rain much relief, but she hadn't grabbed ahold of it yet.
The wad of cotton taped over her ear was less noticeable than her eyes. You're supposed to know what to do! they read. I laid the chart back down helplessly.
"Who's winning?" I asked my brother, thinking he'd have something on ESPN, but he had to turn the channel to tell me, "You want NASCAR stats, or tennis in the Bahamas?"
I didn't answer. Nothing had changed on his chart, either. Temperature: 102. All other vitals: normal. I finally let myself plop into the chair beside his bed, and the tension release in my legs made everything heavy, including my head.
"How's Cora?" Owen asked.
"Same."
"She didn't wake up yet?"
"No."
He hit four or five different channels. "Is she going to wake up?"
I hadn't made up my mind about that yet. Her brain waves showed coma, but none of her vital organs were shutting down—a good sign.
"Is she in any pain?"
"No," I assured him.
"So, what's wrong with her? I know you know."
I did but hadn't wanted to tell him, because any symptoms Cora developed ominously pointed back to us and what we could develop. He had enough to worry about.
"Because, when she passed out, I was standing right there," Owen persisted. "She shed a bucket of tears but couldn't talk—"
"Yeah, yeah." I decided he deserved the truth. "Dr. Godfrey finally concluded that it was just a delayed reaction to stress that came when she relaxed enough. The problem is, well, serious but painless. It's her blood sugar. It shot through the ceiling. And if it weren't for all this other stuff going on, they would have probably thought she was a diabetic in shock. But she had no history of diabetes. Somehow, Dr. Godfrey knew to look for a blood clot on her pancreas and found it."