Inas is watching cartoons in the living room, and she watches us through the doorframe, giving Tyler her big, American, unshy smile. "Wow, I didn't know you worked at Trinitron, Tyler. That's decent."
"Now you know." He turns to me. "I thought you might want to go out for bagels"
"Baggles?" I repeat in confusion. "I don't very much like the baggles."
He steps on my foot as Uncle used to when he would want me to curb my tongue. "How about doughnuts? I can introduce you to Krispy Kremes. They're beyond sadistic."
I nod. Aunt Alika's view of my feet is obstructed, but she watches my eyes.
"Can I count on you to stay out of trouble?" she asks. "I can't imagine what trouble a teenage boy could find on a Saturday morning, but I want you back here in an hour."
I look at my watch, nodding dutifully. "Again, I am sorry. About the school misunderstanding"
She waves at me with a long sigh, and Inas keeps smiling at us. I think that Tyler will ask her to go, but she is dressed in long purple snowman clothing, which I am sure he will recognize as pajamas. I pull him out the door, wondering at American girls, who will not flee to the bedroom rather than let boys peruse their purple and snowmen.
Outside, Tyler says, "Thank god she wasn't dressed. I thought she would ask to come, or your aunt would sic her on us. I want to say a couple of things to you alone, and then I'm taking off."
"Where are you going?" I ask, and he ignores that question.
"First, the deal is off. I can never work for American intelligence."
It is as if he overheard Hodji and me, and I blush. Then I detect that his meaning is personal. "Let's just say that ... I wouldn't pass a background check."
"You have committed a crime?" I guess. I know of his hacking crimes, but it seems to me that these would be quite pleasing to those hiring someone to hack.
"Yeah, I committed a crime. I was born," he says evasively.
"You don't have to tell me. But you can," I encourage him.
"No, I can't. And I didn't come to talk about that. I just wanted you to know that after we get doughnuts, I'm going to Colony One."
I reach for his wrist. I don't want him to do this thing. "Why? Omar is probably in jail by now. We turned him up."
"I don't think USIC was fast enough. I cached a bunch of chatter last night. My translations on BabylonDoo were pretty horrible, but I got the gist. That ShadowStrike assassin, the one sent to the hospital to finish off the girl, was arrested by USIC yesterday."
I freeze, terribly interested. And after my argument with Hodji, my deal is off, too. I do not want to work with people whom I cannot trust to tell me the truth.
"The assassin Omar referenced in his phone chatter with Manuel? He was arrested?" I ask.
Tyler nods. "Omar got itchy, went to the hospital, and overheard some nurses saying that a terrorist attacked one of the patients suspected to be sick from the poisoned water. The guy was taken away in a cop car. I imagine Omar's hiding now. But he might still be in the area."
"How do you know?" I ask.
"I don't. Catalyst e-mailed me this morning. He wanted to say thanks for the software, Blizzard. I was all 'You're welcome.' Asshole. We did a small talk back and forth, and he mentioned a party he'd been invited to at Astor College. I guess I sounded jealous in my reply. Wasn't hard to sound jealous—I never get asked to parties. He asked me to come. It's this afternoon. Maybe they'll mention where Omar is. Hell, it's a party. Maybe he'll fuckin' show up. Maybe they'll even try to recruit me, pfwaa."
"These men are dangerous," I repeat, my deepest instincts alerted.
He laughs. "Find me a twelve-step for people with death wishes, and maybe I'll have more willpower. Right now, all I can picture is me calling USIC with the whereabouts of Omar. That would, uh, make up for a lot of sins in my family."
I don't know what he means.
"You could call them now," I say, but realize that he has just made a promise to them and already he has broken it. They would probably put him in juvenile jail just to keep him out of the way. He would need a bigger tidbit to soothe them down.
"Let's go get doughnuts before I take off," he says.
"I want no doughnuts," I mumble, but for some reason, I get in the car anyway.
He comes slowly around to the driver side, drops into the seat, and says, "So?"
I realize I have left my asthma canister in the house. I am wheezing already. I try to ignore it while I say, "I have longed for a day when I might see the sick people in Colony One. I have worked hard for them. I feel ... connected to them. I will risk my aunt's anger, because tomorrow they might be died."
"Dead," he corrects me and laughs sadly. "Your aunt's anger will be nothing compared to my mom's. This is her Audi, which she never lets me drive. But fine. I'll take you to Colony One and the hospital. But when we get to Astor College, I want you to promise me you'll go for a walk or something—you'll let me go in there alone."
I mumble "we'll see" in Punjabi.
FORTY-TWO
TYLER PING
SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2002
12:30 P.M.
MY MOM'S NOT what you'd call a savory character, but she has become American in one classic sense: Her car is her holy temple. I love driving it. Yet I feel like I'm falling over a cliff, because I'm doing so many things that would piss off so many people, and her anger haunts me the most. It's all in the name of being a good American. Life either makes no sense or is boring as hell.
I showed Hamdani how to change the songs on the radio, and it was amusing to see what stuff he was attracted to. He stopped pushing buttons when he came upon Eric Clapton, the Who, and the Beatles, and when I tried to tell him those people were older than his aunt, he looked confused, as if the concept of a generation gap was lost on him.
The parkway had gotten more narrow and emptier the farther south we got, and the trees had changed on either side of the road. First they had looked like plain forest, but below exit sixty it had changed to these knotty, ugly pine trees with beach sand on the forest floor.
"Pine Barrens," I told him. "You gotta be nuts to live down here."
"I like beach sand," he said. He looked peaceful, for once. Frankly, I hadn't seen him happy since he ate that bagel and shook hands adventurously with the Jews in the White Mound.
We got off the parkway right around twelve thirty, and followed signs to Trinity Falls. The place looked like it had been dropped out of a family movie. Huge oaks lined the roadbed, making arcs like canopies. There were old Victorian houses and colonial homes, and nice gardens and a few shops in what looked like a business district, only too pretty. I figured I could give up on Xanax for calm nerves if I lived down here.
I got out my MapQuest directions, and Hamdani navigated. I guess maps are universally understandable. We parked six blocks from the hospital and walked the rest of the way. Let's say I was paranoid about having my mom's car impounded if I got arrested somehow. I followed him into the hospital lobby.
"Do you want to see a patient?" the woman asked us.
"Yeah, we go to school with the Ebermans." I remembered their name from the mother's obituary and hoped I sounded convincingly casual.
"Well, you can't see Scott. He's in intensive care. Only immediate family. Owen and Rain are in isolation to prevent them from catching any other germs. You have to wear a cap and gown and stand outside their door. Right now, there are four kids up there already. You have to wait until one of them comes down. It could be a while." She rolled her eyes with a pleasant smile. I like women who prattle on in that friendly small-town way. I wished she was my mom.
She asked for a photo ID, which made my heart dance a bit, because that is unusual. I showed my driver's license and Hamdani showed his school ID, which blatantly revealed that he did not go to school with the Ebermans. It was a tricky moment, but she just made sure our faces matched our IDs and didn't write anything down.
"Sign in and have a seat over there." She handed us a clipboard.
<
br /> I signed "Kim Chow," who is a guy in school I hate.
Despite my high jinks, Hamdani signed his own real name.
"They're gonna see that," I growled as we headed over to the sitting area with a blue visitor's pass, though I couldn't quite figure out what harm it could do.
"Perhaps good," he said. "Maybe USIC sees that they are big liars and I am not."
He pulled a copy of the New York Daily News off the coffee table and into his lap, and with a finger under each word, he read the news about our troops in Afghanistan and some remote possibility of going to war with Iraq.
It ogled my brain that the kid could know so much about so many things and bag on English. Computer geeks can do that these days because of the translation programs, but it burned my ass. I hadn't been here a year, and I knew English so well you would have thought I was born in Queens. I like words, I guess. Words don't hate me like people do.
Two strapping jocks got out of the elevator, each carrying a fistful of light blue fabric—probably a mask and a surgical cap. One had his arm around the other, who was looking at the floor and pushing tears off his face. That must be two of the four visitors. Therefore, we could go up—if we both wanted to. My stomach is a lot less firm than I let on, sometimes. I turned to Hamdani.
"I'll stay here. This is your inspiration. I already have mine."
Hamdani didn't question me, though he looked at me again like he had when he asked me to tell him my huge problem. When I waved good-bye in his face, he walked off slowly toward the elevator, but with some glint of determination in his unusually deadpan face.
FORTY-THREE
SHAHZAD HAMDANI
SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2002
12:45 P.M.
THE NURSE ON the sixth floor hands me a little cap and a mask and a blue paper robe that you have to put on backward. She leads me to a doorway. I cannot see inside because two other robed boys are standing in the way talking to the patients. They are very big, full of muscles, and I cannot see past them.
I try to think of what I will say. I had not considered this a problem until now. However, I remember I am a stranger who speaks with an accent, and I could look very suspicious simply by saying that I had heard of them and wanted to meet them.
A man sits in a chair beside the door. He reads the newspaper until his eyes gaze upward to mine. It is in my instincts now to smell USIC ten miles away. This is an agent. He has been ordered to guard the door without arousing suspicion of visitors. I recall Tyler's tale of this morning, that an assassin had been arrested here. I am glad for this agent.
However, I detect that he is profiling me and trying not to. I look like someone he might find untrustworthy. I step back away from the two visitors and pretend to adjust my mask, so the man can see my whole face and realize that I am not old. Perhaps he will see my sharp elbows and skinny arms, from asthma always making me too winded to exercise. He looks into my face and I see him relax slightly. But before I can put the mask back on, I run into a trouble I did not predict.
A man turns the corner way down the corridor, and two well-known eyes lock with mine, coming closer and closer. They are blue as the sky.
"Kid, my god. What are you doing here?"
If I hadn't so much to think about, I would have guessed USIC would be everywhere in this hospital. Agents often have to make their office wherever their travels take them.
When I don't answer, Roger mutters, "Welcome to Colony One."
I am thinking he will apologize for doubting my instincts about Colony One being in America. But he changes the subject instead of offering due praise.
"Hodji will be here any minute. He left me a message late last night, said he was coming at noon. He's actually late..."
"You have spoken to him?" I ask.
He pulls his cell out of his pocket and shrugs in frustration. "No cell phones allowed in a hospital. Not even by USIC. CDC got here at five yesterday, and I haven't left since. I'm only returning my 9-1-1s."
He means that other agents would put "9-1-1" into his phone pager after their own numbers, and it means that they need a callback immediately. For a moment I am deflated that Hodji did not consider my termination a 9-1-1. Then, I realize something intriguing: Roger does not know I am fired. I do not imagine that this could be a vast wealth of information for me. I just know instinctively to be still.
"I'm leaving messages all over the place. I need some face-to-faces. I need Michael down here. I told him so explicitly ... I don't get why he would send you."
I try not to look stunned by his inference. "I only do what I am told..."
He seems pleased. For a moment. Then he shakes his head. "You're a rookie. What the hell is going on up there?"
"I wanted to come," I say, which is truthful. "I have chased the men who torture these people for many months now. It is only natural that I want to see them."
He speaks in Punjabi, which makes me long for home. "I could have gotten you a chance to meet these kids once we got out from under."
"What if they die?" I ask from my heart. "Then I will never meet them."
He digs his fingers into the back of my neck. He doesn't deny it. "I'll introduce you. Just promise me you won't get emotional," he warns. "Especially not in front of the boy."
I grow stiff with pride at the suggestion and wonder why he mentions the boy and not the girl. Aren't girls usually the emotional ones? The nurse brings him the same hospital outfit as I have, and after putting it on, he moves me over to the door. He is so very tall that he speaks over the heads of the two huge figures standing there.
"Guys. Can I introduce you to someone?"
The two big boys part, and I see the two figures in the beds. Roger tells them I am a friend from Pakistan who has come to America, and that I had helped them with a few things.
"This is Owen and Rain," he says to me.
The girl makes me stare. She has very long yellow hair, which I have only seen in Pakistan a few times. There are probably a number of such yellow-haired people in Karachi, but they don't make it to my village. She has a bandage over one ear. I wonder what element of Omar's Red Vinegar has left her thus bandaged and looking so tired.
The boy's eyes are half dead, as if all hope has left him. He is as large as his friends who took up the whole doorway—maybe larger, though he looks pale and weak. He forms a nod, but it is as if he can do no more.
A man has been sitting in a chair inside the room. He has on the same surgical outfit as mine, but his eyes, while blue like Roger's, have the intensity of Hodji's. He stares at me and extends his hand.
"I'm Alan Steckerman. Rain's dad. You're..."
I tell him "Shahzad," and I shake his hand. I keep my eyes to the floor, thinking this name will mean nothing to him. I know his name, surely. When USIC tested the water towers back in January, Steckerman was the main speaker at the news conference. This girl is his daughter. Tyler had spoken this news accurately. I wonder if the terrorists have targeted his neighborhood because of him. I imagine he wonders the same thing. But my name seems to have distracted him momentarily.
"You're Shahzad," he repeats. "The Shahzad?"
His voice is soft, as if he doesn't wish to bother his daughter and her roommate with this information. But he looks keenly at Roger.
Roger says nothing, which means yes. Mr. Steckerman squeezes my hand very tight, which screams a hundred thank-yous. I find this quite honorable given his current circumstances. And I have shaken the hand of a very important American through our sets of gloves, and now Roger squeezes my neck through his gloves. Something about this feels "not quite here."
The girl has her father's intense gaze, and I perceive she listens for things she should not hear. She absorbs the whispers and speaks soft English.
"Wait a minute. Are you that kid Scott was telling me about? He said there was an article in Newsweek about the Kid ... and that Roger knew him."
Roger must have thought that I would never meet these people. He must have been u
nder enough stress not to be able to "think five steps ahead," like he always preached about himself. The girl seems hypnotized by me, and a little smile forms on her lips.
"I'm bad," she mutters. "I never paid enough attention to the computer geeks in school. I mean, the computer whizzes. Come here."
She holds her hand out to me. Feeling shy, I still would like to touch the warmth of life on her fingers through the gloves and think that maybe something I have done has helped her. I am a Pakistani, but in this doorway, I feel American, because the presence of its victims, healers, protectors, encouragers is so very strong.
"He's not allowed in," Roger reminds her, and she drops her hand and rolls her eyes.
"This place is getting on my nerves. There's no better way to get well than to be able to touch your friends."
Her father's intense gaze implies an understanding of both the medical needs and her need. He takes me into the room by the arm, and over to the bed. The girl beckons me closer, despite that Roger follows me and doesn't let go.
I don't know what to say as the girl takes my gloved hand in hers. Her squeezing very tightly makes me squeeze back. Her fear shoots up my arm, but also her hope, which comes from I don't know where. Except that I perceive in her beautiful little town, with so many hopeful presences surrounding, that hope is part of life.
Roger mutters in my ear from behind in Punjabi, "She doesn't know exactly what you do for us, but I think she gets it. I want you to do something very important right now. I want you to deny that you are the Kid."
His words hurt my heart. Roger thinks I am still hired. I think it will hurt very much to deny who I am, but in reality I am no longer the Kid, not after yesterday.
"I am not that person of whom you speak," I say. "But I wish you well. I hope you ... make better soon"
She lets go of my hand in disappointment. "Oh. Well, it was nice meeting you. Thanks for stopping by."
Roger takes me up an elevator, mumbling in tired, nonsensical English that it is fine for me to see the other boy, because he will surely not recognize me or ask me any questions. In fact, in the ICU he leaves me alone with this patient who goes by the name Scott, while he talks to another agent who is reading the newspaper just inside the double doors.