Due Preparations for the Plague (8 page)

Even before Lowell speaks, Samantha has an intuition that the phone call will be momentous, but that is because she is already in a state of febrile and heightened alert. She hears the under- and overtones when people talk. She imagines an aura of electro-magnetic feelers extending invisibly from her skin and waving about her like angel hair, like the sustenance system of certain sea creatures on tropical reefs: as water rakes through their unseen silken mesh traps, all that is needed stays. Information is falling toward her. It adheres.

“Samantha?” Lowell says, and she recognizes his voice instantly. She has heard it often enough on his answering machine. She has scripted future conversations they will have.

An avalanche starts with a pebble. Samantha thinks of the random searchlight of Cassie’s lucidity as setting scree tumbling, loose drifts of it that pull scattered data along in their train. They gather density and speed. Clusters of detail roll over each other and cling. They generate force and the force intensifies. Disparate pieces of information cohere, connections pick up momentum, new facts are exposed. Samantha has a premonition that critical mass has been reached, that the accumulation of data has hooked up isolated circuits, that currents are fizzing around the elaborate latticework and traplines of her research, sparks jumping gaps, missing information being sucked into the black hole of her intense need to know.

“Um … it’s Lowell,” he says.

Samantha holds her breath.

“This isn’t easy,” he says.

“I know.” She can barely speak, and an inner catechism warns:
Don’t breathe. Don’t frighten him off.
“Not for any of us. It’s like picking a scab.”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, that’s what it’s like.” That is exactly what it is like, he thinks. As soon as he starts to think about the hijacking, fresh bleeding begins.

It is strange how a silence can suck at two people and how it can vibrate between them and how much information can be sent and received through the mere sound of air moving in and out of lungs. And because something is already understood between the two of them, that the
thing itself
—the blown-up plane, the horrible deaths—is beyond comprehension and beyond language, because of this, they do not feel any awkwardness in a prolonged silence.

Samantha waits.

“In my case,” Lowell says, “the death was … the death itself … the death of my mother was not the major thing.” His breath, turning labored, is loud in Samantha’s ear. “Look,” he says. “I don’t think I can manage this, after all. I don’t think I can talk about it.”

Samantha listens to the plosive beat, rapid and uneven, of air entering and leaving his lungs. She risks saying, “Is that because of Avi Levinstein?”

Lowell makes a small violent sound—he is hyperventilating—and Samantha is afraid he will hang up.

“How do you know about Levinstein?” he asks at last.

“I know his son. I only just learned that the woman Avi Levinstein took with him to Paris was your mother, so I know this must be a painful—”

Lowell hangs up. A week passes and then he calls again.

“You have no idea how angry I was,” he tells Sam without preamble. “I wanted both of them to die.” His voice is faint, and Samantha has to strain to hear. “To make a wish like that and have it come true. Do you see what that makes me?”

Samantha says nothing.

“Do you understand what that makes me?” he persists.

“I understand what you
fear
it makes you. But it was natural for you to be angry—” She can almost hear Lowell twisting in the fires of his own savage guilt. “Look,” she says, “I don’t know if this might help, or if you’ll want to do this. And I’m not at all sure he’ll want to do it either. But I know Jacob Levinstein well. He’s a phoenix. I mean, he’s one of us, the children who survived. We have an Internet club. We call ourselves phoenixes because we rose up out of the ashes, so to speak. Jacob’s the son of Avi—”

Lowell makes a strangled sound, somewhere between laughter and pain. “Are you crazy?”

“He feels pretty much the same way as you do, I think. It might clear the air for both of you if you—”

“I didn’t call to talk about my mother.”

Samantha suddenly wonders if Lowell’s mother was one of those who caressed her as she passed, when the hijackers were pushing the children along the aisles, when the children were being herded, prodded with rifles, when the rough hands of gunmen slapped them, when the gunmen stuffed rags into sobbing mouths. Samantha finds herself wondering which hands might have belonged to Lowell’s mother, because hands had come from everywhere as the children passed, hands stroking them, touching, giving blessing, sending messages that she bears in her body still.

“I’m really calling,” Lowell says more calmly, “because you said you had information about my father—”

“It may not be the kind of information that you want.”

“I’m sure it won’t be,” Lowell says. “But you said there was a woman in Paris who knew my father, who claims to be—you said I have a half-sister.”

“I think so, yes.”

“Is she claiming this, or are you?”

“She is. But she claims she has proof. You didn’t know about her?”

“No. And I don’t believe her, but I’m curious.”

“I’ll understand if you’re not ready for this,” Samantha says, but
Please
, she is thinking, please stay on the line, please give me something, another crumb, two crumbs, I can wait for the trail.

“My father’s first wife died,” Lowell says. “And they never had children. My mother was his second wife and I was an only child.” He pauses, assessing possible evidence, pro and con. “But he
was
stationed in Paris for several years,” he concedes. “During his first marriage.”

“He had an affair with a Frenchwoman. I’ve semi-confirmed this from declassified documents. The CIA kept files on a woman who worked at the American Embassy because they considered her a security risk. She had a daughter by an American, a diplomat or an agent, it isn’t clear which. Françoise claims that was your father. She says she has photographs to prove it. You can make contact with her through our website if you want.”

“I have to think about it.”

“She seems to know a lot about your father. She says he’s in Intelligence.”

“He was.”

“Was?”

“He died in a car crash two months ago. September.”

“Oh,” Samantha says. She feels winded. She can feel a red-hot trail fizzle out. “What date?”

“Four days before the anniversary,” he says. “So you don’t know everything.”

“There’s way too much I don’t know.”

“You hadn’t been hounding my father the way you hounded me?”

“I apologize for hounding you. I guess I was obnoxious. I’m sorry.”

“Well, not obnoxious,” he says. “But relentless, yes.”

“I’m sorry. I get like that every September.”

“Yeah,” he says, softening. “I freak out too. Every year.”

“I’m obsessive-compulsive about it, I guess. About anything to do with the hijacking.”

“I am too, but in the opposite way. Compulsive avoidance. But if you’re, you know, so obsessive, how come you
didn’t
hound my father?”

“I only just found out about him, from Françoise. People like your father aren’t listed in the telephone book.”

“How’d you find out about me?”

“The passenger list’s always been available. Each passenger listed one next-of-kin with the airline for notification. Your mother listed you.”

“Yes, I suppose she would. How’d you find this Françoise?”

“I didn’t. She contacted me. On the website for Flight 64.”

“I avoid anything like that,” Lowell says.

“So. Do you want to meet me and talk?”

“I’m not sure. Where’s this area code? D.C., isn’t it? Is that where you live?”

“Yes. But I could come up to Boston for a weekend. Or we could pick somewhere in between, like New York.”

“Maybe,” he says. “I’m not sure. I have to be careful.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” Lowell says nervously. “I don’t mean anything.”

A hole-in-the-wall café in Penn Station is not where Samantha would have picked, but Lowell insists. He has a soft-sided overnight bag with him and he keeps it on his lap. He looks around.

“Are you expecting someone?” Sam asks.

“What? No. No, no. Just checking the joint. It’s like lead in paint.”

“Lead in paint?”

“Old paint. Before they banned lead. Once you know about it, you see it everywhere. I’ve had medical problems,” he says. “Even walls become dangerous, know what I mean?”

“Uh-huh,” she says doubtfully, trying to follow.

“I paint houses,” he explains. “Lot of old houses in Boston, peeling paint. I have to strip them. Lead levels are up in my blood.”

“Uh-huh. I don’t know much about—”

“Heart problems. Nervous system. I get tested every month. You live with it.” Eyes darting, he checks each stream of New York commuters spilling into the concourse at Penn. “You get to expect danger. Could come from any direction.”

“Got you,” she says. “But, ah, it’s not lead poisoning you’re checking for here.”

“No.” Their eyes meet for a moment, then skitter away.

“Message received,” she breathes. She suddenly wants to call Jacob. She wants to check in with him, make sure he is okay. “I could order us a bottle,” she says to Lowell. “I need a drink, don’t you? But I wouldn’t trust the house wine here. Sweetened cleaning fluid.”

Lowell blinks at her. “Wine? No, not my poison. Whatever’s on tap,” he tells the waiter.

“Your father was in Intelligence.” Sam’s voice has dropped to a whisper.

Lowell says warily, “If you were hoping for information about that, I don’t have any.”

“Your half-sister thinks—”

“This Françoise—”

“Yes. She thinks your father—her father—knew about Flight 64. In advance, I mean.”

Lowell is holding his overnight bag tightly against his chest. He feels the skin of the bag incessantly with his fingers as though checking that its internal organs are still there. He prods at something, and reassures himself about its outline, a rectangular one. A book, Samantha thinks; or perhaps a box. One of Lowell’s feet against the leg of the bistro table is making the metal rattle against the floor.

“You’re not surprised,” Sam whispers, watching him closely. “You knew that your father knew.”

Lowell lurches and the table tips and Sam grabs for her wine. An amber wave sloshes over the edge of Lowell’s beer glass. “What? I
am
surprised,” he whispers fiercely. “Of course I’m surprised. Why wouldn’t I be surprised? Besides, the statement’s ridiculous. Flights to the US are always at risk, all the time. My father knew that, the way all of us know it, only he was more aware of it than most. Naturally.”

“This was quite specific, Françoise claims. There was a tip-off about Flight 64.”

The bistro table is rattling so noisily that both Lowell and Sam lean forward on the marble top, dampening the racket with their weight. Sam can feel the tremor reaching her fingertips. When Lowell speaks, she can feel the puff of air from his lips. “There are scores of tip-offs every week,” he says. “Most of them hoaxes.”

“But not this one. The French police had Charles de Gaulle on high security alert, except the passengers weren’t told. Françoise thinks your father knew. She thinks his information was quite precise.”

Why?
Lowell’s lips form the question, though no sound comes out. He is beginning to hyperventilate.

“She had a ticket for Flight 64, but she never got on the plane because—”

Lowell laughs in a nervous high-pitched way. “I bet this is about blackmail,” he says.

Sam presses her own foot down on Lowell’s, to stop the trembling. “That doesn’t seem to be her motivation,” she says. “She’s got something heavy on her conscience, is my impression. She wants to set something right. She wants to make contact with you.”

Lowell recoils. “You didn’t tell her how to reach me?”

His eyes constantly monitor the Penn Station throng. Sometimes he twists his chair to carry out sentry duty from a new angle. From time to time, he partially unzips his overnight bag and reaches in to feel the contents, checking.

“What’s in your bag?” Samantha asks in a low voice. “Nothing,” he says. “My things. How much information did you give her?”

“I didn’t give her anything, but she can easily find it herself.”

“Great,” Lowell says. “That’s just great. Wait. Where are you going?”

“I have to make a phone call,” Samantha says. Her own panic reflex is high. In a pay phone booth, she dials Jacob’s office number, then tries him at home. Both times, she gets his answering machine.

“Jacob,” she says. Her voice wavers. “It’s Sam. Just wanted to know you’re okay. Don’t get upset, but I’m meeting with Lowell, you know, the son of the woman … We’re in a fast-food joint at Penn Station, and he knows more than he’s letting on. I’ll call back later, okay? I just want you to know where I am.”

At the table, Lowell has his backpack pinned between his knees. He is holding his beer glass with both hands. “There are Civil War junkies,” he says, “and
Titanic
junkies, and Elvis-sighting junkies.” He gulps down his beer. “I can tell you’re a hijack junkie. Someone who collects every harebrained rumor from loonies on the Web—”

Samantha bridles. “I may be a junkie, but I’m rigorous. I read declassified documents, I read the airline reports, I read newspaper archives, I contact survivors and families. I’m doing this for a senior thesis in American history. Everything has to be documented.”

“So what have you documented?”

“Nothing much yet,” she concedes. “But I’m working on it. And I think the odds are that you do have a half-sister even though Françoise may not be her real name.”

“Okay, so maybe I have a half-sister. And okay, maybe she had a ticket for the same flight—is that confirmed?”

“Not yet. But it will be. I’ve applied for a research grant to go to Paris for spring semester. I want to meet with Françoise. I want to see her ticket. She says she’s still got it.”