After the First Death Page 4

  “Is something the matter?” the girl called, her voice anxious. “Is one of the children sick?”

  “Check the other children,” Artkin told the boy. “See if they are all right.” To the girl, he called: “One moment, miss.”

  Miro made a quick tour of the children. Some were half awake, reposing in partial slumber. Others slept, their faces slack with sleep, bodies limp and loose. But they all seemed normal. All seemed to be breathing regularly. He reported his findings to Artkin, who was working on the boy, massaging his chest, breathing into his mouth.

  Miro looked toward the girl. She had turned in her seat and was regarding Miro and Artkin with apprehension. Miro felt his anger rising. If this had not happened with the child, he would now be carrying out his assignment. First, the girl had appeared as the driver instead of the man as planned. And now this delay. He felt his stomach muscles tightening. Looking at the dead child once more, he pondered how quickly death could arrive. He looked away from the child, that blue flesh, the body so still. Why should this death concern him? He had seen death more violently, more sickening. He remembered the man in the Detroit operation who had soiled his trousers the moment before he died, the stench filling the car. But this child seemed so defenseless, and his death was without purpose. Artkin had planned the death of some children if it became necessary, when the greatest effect could be obtained. Another thing: Artkin did not like unexpected happenings, unplanned developments. One of the most important parts of an operation, he said, was anticipation. So that there would be no surprises, or at least a minimum, and minor ones, at that.

  “Miro,” Artkin said, “come closer.”

  The girl called again: “What’s going on? Is somebody sick?”

  “One moment, please,” Artkin told the girl. And then to Miro, although he wasn’t looking at Miro. He was looking at the dead child and when he spoke, it was in a whisper. “The child is dead, Miro, and we have to take that death into account. But we can turn this to our advantage. In fact, this may be more effective than the girl’s death. It will shock them, the death of a child, but it will also show them that we are not bluffing, that we are adamant.”

  He stood up and faced Miro. “We must improvise, Miro. For the moment, we do nothing about the girl except watch her carefully. I am afraid of the drugs. They are very powerful, as you can see, more powerful that I had thought they would be. I do not wish to drug them further at this time. We do not want a bus full of dead children—that would destroy the plan, everything. They are our bargaining power. So, we wait. The girl can help us to take care of them, keep them quiet.”

  “But—” Miro began to protest. His first major assignment, his initiation into the brotherhood, and now it was being set aside. He had prepared himself for this moment, girded his loins, waited for years; and now it was postponed, delayed, canceled perhaps.

  “You will have your chance, Miro,” Artkin said kindly. “When we see that no other children are affected by the drug, we will give them more. This boy was perhaps allergic. Or had a weak heart. An exception.” He looked toward the girl, who continued to gaze at them with concern on her face. “The girl must die, Miro. She has seen us without the masks and she must die. And you will see that she does. But not yet, not just yet. Be patient. She is more useful to us alive, for the moment.”

  Miro acquiesced, saw the reasonableness of the move. He knew what Artkin had long ago taught him: The plan was of first importance, of only importance, all else paled beside the plan. Their actions were meaningless, worth nothing, in fact were abominations without the plan.

  “Go to the girl now. Tell her what happened. Explain that it was an accident. Find out her name, everything you can about her. Win her confidence. I will be busy with other things.”

  Miro nodded, starting away.

  “And put on your mask, Miro. It is time. By now, the messages have been sent and we can expect action at any moment.”

  The mask.

  Miro both loved and hated the mask. Actually, it was not a mask but a modified version of a hood worn by skiers. The material was some kind of fabric with an inside lining of man-made material the Americans were clever at producing. The lining kept the skin cool while somehow absorbing the perspiration. The mask dangled from a button inside Miro’s jacket. The jacket was the one he always wore on assignments. Dark brown, hidden pockets, two sizes too large, to allow extra equipment to be carried easily—the Swiss army knife, the pliers, the screwdriver set. Plus the holster for the gun.

  Miro reached for the mask but decided to talk to the girl before putting it on. He would be able to communicate with her more easily that way. Sometimes, in fact, he felt like a prisoner in the mask, as if he were locked inside, looking out at the world but not part of it. The mask did not cover his eyes, of course, or his nostrils or mouth. There were two small openings, barely noticeable, at the ears: weblike fabric covered the ears so that his hearing would not be impaired. But he did not always feel comfortable in the mask.

  And yet there were things he loved about the mask. Looking at himself in the mirror the first time he put it on, when he was thirteen or so, he realized that his age was disguised. He could have been twenty-three or thirty-three, a boy no longer. Men’s faces paled when they confronted him in the mask, men many years older and much bigger and stronger. The mask gave him a sense of power and authority.

  Sometimes, however, he brooded about the mask. He had the feeling that he must be doing something dishonorable if the operations and confrontations had to be carried out with faces hidden. If what we are doing is heroic, to deliver our people and restore our homeland, why must we hide who we are? he once asked Artkin. And Artkin had told him that there were many laws in the world, good laws and bad laws, right laws and wrong laws. According to the wrong laws, their mission, their work, was condemned. But these laws had been made by their enemies. So they had to disguise themselves to remain free under the wrong laws.

  Miro held the mask in his hand now. It was black with red stitching around the eyes, nostrils, and mouth. The moment when he first put it on in an operation was always exhilarating; it was the gesture that divided his life. Without the mask, he was Miro Shantas, the boy without even a real name to identify him to the world. With the mask, he was Miro Shantas, freedom fighter. He often wondered which person he really was.

  Okay. She wasn’t panicky. She listened to the boy, telling herself to be sharp, alert, on her toes, cheerleading herself onward. She knew the boy’s name was Miro and the man was Artkin. She’d heard them exchanging names a few moments ago, and somehow the realization that they had names restored a sense of normality to the situation, reduced the degree of terror that had engulfed her during the bus ride to the bridge. Miro, Artkin was much better than the boy, the man, rendering them human. And yet what this boy named Miro was telling her now was inhuman, a horror story. The child was dead.

  “Murdered,” she said, the word leaping to her lips, an alien word she had never uttered before in its real meaning.

  “Not murder, miss,” the boy said. “It was an accident. We were told the drugs were safe, but this boy died.”

  “Does this mean the other kids are in danger, too?”

  “No. We have checked them all—you can see for yourself—and they are normal. Perhaps this boy had a weak heart. Or he was allergic to the drugs.” He pronounced “allergic” as three separate words.

  Kate turned to look at the children. They were still subdued, although some yawned and stirred restlessly in their seats.

  “We want you to help us with the children,” the boy said. “Take care of them. See to their needs. This will convince you that we mean them no harm.”

  “How long are we going to be here?” she asked. She nodded toward the man, who was going from seat to seat, touching the children, their foreheads, their cheeks, speaking to them gently and soothingly. “He said it would be all over when we reached the bridge.”

  Miro thought fast. “We have had a change
of plans. Because of the death of the boy. We will be here a bit longer.”

  “How long?” she asked, pressing on, sensing a sudden uncertainty in the boy.

  He shrugged. “No one knows, really. A few hours …”

  At that moment, a noise at the door claimed her attention. The big lumbering man who had forced open the door with a crowbar was back at the door again. He shattered the windows in the door with a rock.

  “What’s he doing?” she asked.

  The man broke the glass with a glowering intensity, looking neither at the girl nor at Miro.

  “He is breaking the glass to put a lock on the door so that it cannot be opened with the handle there,” Miro said.

  Her glance went automatically to the emergency door on the left halfway down the bus. The boy did not miss the direction her eyes had taken. He did not smile; he seemed incapable of smiling. But his eyes brightened. “The emergency door will be locked with a clamp,” he said. “And the windows—we will seal the windows shut. It is useless to think of escaping.”

  She felt mildly claustrophobic and also transparent, as if the boy could see right into her mind. Turning away, she saw the man standing now at the seat where the dead boy lay. She wondered which child was dead and yet, in a way, she didn’t want to know. An anonymous death didn’t seem so terrible. She didn’t really know any of the children, anyway, although their faces were familiar from the few times she’d substituted for her uncle. She’d heard them call each other by name—Tommy, Karen, Monique. But she couldn’t place names with faces.

  “May I see the child?” she asked. And realized she didn’t really want to see the child. Not a dead child. But she felt it was her responsibility to see him, to corroborate the fact of his death.

  Miro paused.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  “Kate. Kate Forrester.”

  “My name is Miro,” he said. He realized that this was perhaps the first time he had ever introduced himself to anyone. Usually, he was anonymous. Or Artkin would say “The boy’s name is Miro” when they encountered strangers.

  Kate pretended that she hadn’t learned his name earlier. “And your friend’s name?” she asked.

  “Artkin,” he said.

  The huge man outside the bus was now testing the lock. Kate didn’t care to know his name. His name would only establish his existence in her life, and he was so ugly and menacing that she didn’t want to acknowledge him at all. She glanced at the van and saw the black fellow at the wheel, staring into space, as if in a dream world of his own, not really here in the van, on the bridge.

  “Please,” Kate said. “May I see the child?”

  Miro shrugged. “We are going to be together for a while on this bus. You should call me Miro and I should call you Kate.” Miro found the words difficult to say, particularly to a girl and an American girl at that. But Artkin had told him to win her confidence.

  The girl didn’t answer. Miro, flustered, turned away and then beckoned her to follow him. He led her to the center of the bus. “She wants to see him,” he told Artkin.

  Kate drew a deep breath and looked down. The child lay still, as if asleep. His pallor had a bluish tint. Miro also looked, seeing the child from the girl’s viewpoint, wondering what she thought. Had she ever seen a dead person before? Probably not; not in her well-scrubbed American world. The girl shuddered slightly. “Come,” Miro said. She looked grateful as she turned away from the child. At least she had not fainted. Her flesh was pale, however, and this somehow made her blond hair more pronounced, more radiant. He realized that American boys would consider her beautiful.

  Artkin accompanied them to the front of the bus.

  “What happens now?” Kate asked. Would she ever forget that blue child on the bus seat?

  “As far as your part is concerned, miss,” Artkin said, “it will consist mostly of waiting. For a few hours. We have sent messages and are waiting for a reply. Meanwhile, you will care for the children. They will be awakening soon. I want you to reassure them. Most of all, keep them in control, keep them quiet.”

  Kate closed her eyes. The migraine reasserted itself, digging into her forehead. The blue face of the dead child floated in the darkness. She realized she didn’t even known his name. Escaping from that face, she opened her eyes to confront the two strangers before her. The full import of what was going on suddenly rushed into full and terrible comprehension.

  “I know what you are,” she said. She did not recognize her voice: it was strident, off key, too loud in her ears, the voice of a stranger. “You’re holding us hostage and you’ve made demands. You’re going to hold us here until the demands are met. You’re—” She faltered, unable to say the word. Hijackers. Her mind was crowded with newspaper headlines and television newscasts of hijackings all over the world, gunfire and explosions, innocent persons killed, even children.

  “This is no concern of yours,” Artkin said, his voice cold, the words snapping like whips. “The children are your concern. Nothing else. See to the children.”

  She drew back as if he had struck her.

  Turning to Miro, Artkin said: “It is time for the masks.”

  She saw them take the masks out of their jackets. They pulled them over their heads. They had suddenly become grotesque, monstrous, figures escaped from her worst nightmares. And she saw her own doom in the masks.

  She wet her pants so badly that the trickles down her thighs were like the caresses of moist and obscene fingers.

  part

  3

  Another picture postcard from the collected works of Benjamin Marchand: Nettie Halversham.

  Color the postcard to do justice to Nettie Halversham’s beauty: eyes the color of bruises, hair like the shining black of old classic automobiles, lips like crushed strawberries. Ridiculous? Maybe. But, God, Nettie Halversham was—is—beautiful. And her heart was also black like the color of those classic cars.

  Edge the postcard with guilt because guilt whistles through the tunnel in my chest. Guilt of all shades and colors plus the guilt that sends me to Brimmler’s Bridge when I should be directing snowballs at Martingale and Donateli or contemplating the amber brew in the township of Pompey.

  The guilt, however, really starts with Nettie Halversham.

  Because.

  Because, all during the time of the seizure of the bus, when those kids were being held as hostages and the television stations were giving out all kinds of bulletins, and Fort Delta was in a state of emergency—a bodyguard was even assigned to me and Jackie Brenner and other kids whose fathers were in positions of authority at Delta—anyway, during all that time, the headlines and the sirens screaming, I could think only of myself and how miserable I was, and I’d sit and stare at the telephone for hours. Or what seemed like hours. Once, I put my hand on the phone to pick it up and the guard came alert and said: “Who are you calling?”

  He was a big guy. He looked like a former football player, or maybe a boxer. His ears were smashed and his nose was twisted. He was the original on which the cliché was based. He made me nervous because he just didn’t guard the house and all; he stayed with me, in the same room, every minute. He’d watch me when I ate, and he never wanted anything to eat himself. I figured if he ate with me I wouldn’t feel so self-conscious. At least he didn’t stare. He seemed to be contemplating something very distant and amusing. Anyway, he asked who I was calling and I shrugged and didn’t say anything. Because I knew a phone call would be useless, a futile gesture.

  Why?

  Because I wanted to call Nettie Halversham.

  And yet I didn’t want to call her.

  There’s an old song that goes “What Is This Thing Called Love?” What is it, anyway? I had never given much thought to love before I met Nettie Halversham. And if I had, I would have figured that love was an instant emotion between two people, that if you fell in love with a girl she automatically fell in love with you. Something mutual. As if the universe had been ordered to be that wa
y. All during the time I was a kid, a real kid, like eleven or twelve, I hardly thought above love. I thought it was loving your mother and father. I’d see love stories on television and find them dull and boring. Same with love stories in books and magazines. Later, of course, I’d read love stories to track down the horny parts and they made me wonder how it would be to touch a girl and if being horny was part of being in love, although it seemed to me you needed ultimate respect toward the girl you loved. Like my father’s attitude toward my mother: gentle, considerate.

  Anyway.

  I met Nettie and fell in love with her. Like lightning striking and the thunder was the boom of my heart—talk about song lyrics. I met her when Jackie Brenner and I went to the Hallowell Y one Saturday morning. Fort Delta has the same facilities as the Y, of course, but it was a treat to take a bus into Hallowell and get away from the post. Until a few years ago, my existence and my activities were confined to Delta, which is not as limited as it sounds since Delta is a self-sufficient and self-sustaining community. But I began to get a kind of claustrophobia about two years ago. Unlike some Delta kids who went to school in Hallowell, either at public or private schools, I attended schools on the post: small classes, much individual attention, and educational monitoring my father himself had instituted. So there was a sense of freedom when I went to Hallowell on the bus, not the same old kids, not the same old streets named for famous battles (Tarawa Road, Château Thierry Avenue), not the same old barracks buildings. That Saturday last August, I met Nettie Halversham in front of the Y. She was standing there with a girl Jackie knew. I looked at her and my knees turned liquid and my stomach felt as though I hadn’t eaten for a week. She was not dressed in the usual outfit: jeans and jersey. She wore a blue blouse and a skirt, white with a blue edging. I found myself talking like a crazy man, about all kinds of things, nothing I can recall now, which is just as well. And all the time this happiness was soaring in me because she was looking at me and smiling and laughing at my jokes, whatever they were, and I felt like the most clever, most cool guy in the world. I kept my eyes on her and knew I was in love. I didn’t have to run to a dictionary for a definition of the word and I didn’t have to rush to a doctor to have my pulse taken. I knew I was in love. Irrevocably. I also figured that she was in love with me, that not just me but we had fallen in love, the way it was supposed to happen.