The Devil's Light (28 page)

He checked the time on his cell phone. Noting that he had two hours until his first class, Brooke bought a bagel and black coffee at the Gourmet Garage, then sat on the bench where the young Dylan had posed for a famous photograph. Pouring from the subway stop for NYU, students headed for earlier classes. Content not to be among them, Brooke gazed south toward the Twin Towers, their windows glinting like chips of mica. Feeling the first jolt of caffeine, he wondered if Ben was already fueling America's financial engine from his aerie in Tower 2.

From above him a deep roar pierced his consciousness. A young woman on the sidewalk set down her briefcase, gaping at the sky. Looking up, Brooke saw a silver passenger plane framed against the blue, so unnaturally low that he could identify the airline. With a deep, thunderous roar it passed over the town houses and low-rises of the Village, heading inexorably toward the towers.

Brooke stood, his sense of something gone horribly wrong warring with disbelief. As though hypnotized, pedestrians froze in fascination as the plane moved toward Tower 1. In its last moments of flight Brooke grasped what was about to occur.

A woman shrieked.

The silver projectile struck near the top of the tower, wedging in its side like a spear in some wounded beast. Flames burst from broken windows. Then black smoke commingled with pieces of white, papers fluttering in the wind like tiny kites. All around Brooke, people began moaning or crying out. As if awakened, Brooke pushed the memory button on his cell phone, praying that his friend was late to work.

It took fifteen minutes and repeated calls for Ben to answer. His voice was jittery yet stunned. “I'm in my office,” he began. “A plane hit Tower One—”

“Get out,” Brooke urged him. “Now.”

Brooke heard the same roar, but more distant, then saw a second airplane
turning in a glide pattern toward Tower 2. “There's another plane,” he shouted.

A few seconds passed, the plane coming closer. Then he heard Ben's strangled voice. “Oh, my God—”

As the plane hit, Brooke closed his eyes. He heard a woman reciting the Hail Mary, then forced himself to look. By his horrified reckoning, the plane had struck below Ben's office. Brooke's phone had cut off.

Instinctively, he began running toward the towers.

Traffic had stopped. Weaving through traumatized witnesses, Brooke pushed on for over an hour, cell phone clasped to his ear. Perhaps Aviva was already at school; perhaps she was in the subway. In some insane precinct of his mind Brooke imagined rescuing Ben for them both.

His phone buzzed. “Brooke? Are you still there?”

Thank God. “Yeah,” Brooke managed to say.

“We're trapped here. I can't reach Aviva.”

“Try later,” Brooke pled. “Look for a way out.”

“I can't.” Ben's voice hovered between stunned and resigned, as though Brooke's anguish had imposed the obligation of calm. “I have to try her again.”

The line clicked off. Brooke kept heading for the towers as though in an endless nightmare, one block becoming another until he reached the plaza. From thickening smoke, flames pierced the sky. Men and women ran from the building without looking back. A man in a suit jumped from above the ruined floors, twirling in the air like a rag doll before his body hit concrete.

Stunned, Brooke felt the phone buzz in his hand. “I still can't find her.” Ben's voice was preternaturally calm. “Guess the honeymoon's over.”

“Hang on,” Brooke encouraged him. “Those towers are built to hold.”

“They will or they won't,” Ben answered in a monotone. “Whatever happens, I want you with Aviva. Take care of her, all right?”

Another man jumped, then a woman, her skirt billowing as she plummeted to earth. More survivors sprinted from the towers as the gawkers around Brooke groaned or spoke frantically into their phones. “I will,” Brooke promised in a parched voice. “But they'll find a way to save you—”

“Easy for you to say.” For a final moment, Ben hesitated. “I love you, too, Brooke.”

The phone went dead in Brooke's hand.

As if drawn forward, he edged closer. Then he gazed up at the crumbling floors that imprisoned his friend. He made himself call Aviva.

Her phone rang six times, then went into the message center. “Hi,” the recording said. “This is Aviva Schecter—”

Brooke dialed again. “Ben?” someone cried into the phone.

It was Aviva, yet not Aviva. Mindful of his promise to Ben, Brooke tried to speak calmly. “It's Brooke, Aviva. Where are you?”

His tone seemed to affect her. Dully, she said, “At the law school. I saw—”

More bodies hit the sidewalk. Sirens filled the air; firemen entered both towers, passing those who fled. Aviva began sobbing.

“Wait for me,” Brooke urged. “I'll be there soon—”

Above him, Brooke heard a sharp crack, followed by a sound like a massive waterfall, thousands of glass panes shattering. The side of the tower facing him began to buckle. Then the roar of rolling thunder split the air as the tower cascaded downward.

Around Brooke men and women screamed or wept or ran away. It came over him that one hundred floors were becoming a pile of steel and rubble and ruined flesh that encased his closest friend. Then he realized that the shrieks he kept hearing came from Aviva.

Belatedly, he spoke into the phone. “Aviva—”

“Who is this?” a man's taut voice demanded.

“Brooke—Brooke Chandler. A friend of Aviva's and Ben's.”

The man's voice lowered. “She can't talk now. As soon as we can, we're getting Aviva to her parents.”

The phone clicked off.

People kept running from Tower 1. But Brooke's last indelible memory was of the uniformed firemen marching like warriors single file into the tower just before it collapsed.

For several hours, Brooke sat alone in his apartment.

Aviva's parents had come for her. She was at their home, sedated; there was nothing he could do for her. Or, when he called them, for Ben's disconsolate parents.

Aviva was a widow, Brooke realized. The word was strange to him.

In midafternoon, his father phoned, inquiring after Ben. Peter Chandler was gentle and consoling. No, Brooke said, he could not come to their penthouse. He could not seem to move.

More hours crept by. Though he tried, Brooke was unable to watch the
news. He knew what had happened—terrorists had murdered his friend, and thousands of others. Tomorrow would be soon enough for details.

When Brooke's telephone rang, he forced himself to answer. In the days ahead, someone would surely need him.

“Brooke?” she said.

Even now, Anit's voice jolted him. Foolishly, he asked, “Are you all right?”

“Yes. But are you? I'm worried about Ben.”

Brooke's stomach clenched. “Ben was in his office,” he told her. “He can't have lived.”

“Oh, Brooke,” she exclaimed. “And Aviva?”

“She's with her parents. That's all I know.”

For the next moments, Anit was quiet. “Do you want me to fly there?”

Yes,
he wanted to say.
Please, God, yes.
Then he realized that seeing Anit come and go would cause more heartache than a broken heart could stand. He breathed deeply, then said, “I'll be okay.”

She was silent, as though wondering how to respond. Then she said, “I understand. Please know that I care for you.”

“And I you,” Brooke heard himself answer.

Anit's voice remained gentle. “Perhaps you can give me Aviva's number. I'll find the right time, I promise.”

Brooke repeated the number. Softly, Anit wished him whatever solace he could find.

With all the warmth and grace his friend deserved—or at least so Brooke hoped—he spoke at Ben's memorial service. In the days thereafter, he sat shiva with Ben's parents and Aviva.

Gaunt and pale, Aviva struggled to be sweet. But he sensed that it pained her to look at him. He was too much a part of the friend he had outlived.

Brooke said nothing of his own grief. There would be time for that, in his own private way. He had never believed that a single moment could redefine one's nature. Now al Qaeda had made the life he had planned seem shallow. Perhaps, at last, he understood Anit Rahal.

* * *

After graduation, Brooke Chandler entered the CIA.

As instructed, he told his parents and Aviva that he had joined the State Department. He said that to Anit in one of their emails. It did not surprise him to learn that she had reenlisted in the IDF.

Brooke chose to become a case officer, one of only sixty trained that year. In the months that followed, he learned to jump from airplanes; strip and fire a range of weapons; destroy a vehicle with a homemade bomb; kill a man with a gun or knife or his own hands; drive a car so as to smash through barriers and escape entrapment or pursuit; become another person with a different life. The last part, he sometimes thought, had begun on September 11.

All of this merged his natural gifts—curiosity, analytical skills, a competitive nature—with a life of purpose. He would try to prevent such horrors as he had witnessed or, failing that, to ensure that the architects paid a price. In this he had no illusions. His work might never come to much; the capacity of determined men to combine inventiveness with a lust for the apocalypse might outstrip the efforts of those who believed as Brooke did. But he would live this life as though it mattered.

He served two tours in Iraq, moving into and out of the Green Zone. Brooke excelled there. But the war was a bloody mess, a misbegotten mélange of savagery that destabilized a country and gave new life to al Qaeda. What he learned was the infinite capacity of decision makers to delude themselves, and the need to question their wisdom.

Now and then he emailed Anit in his guise as foreign service officer. The mills of life ground on. Anit became engaged to Meir, now a helicopter pilot in the army. Brooke was still in Baghdad when Aviva emailed that she was marrying a widower whose wife had died as Ben had.

In his last year in Iraq, 2006, Israel began its own misadventure, the Lebanese quagmire with Hezbollah. He contacted Anit at once, hoping for her safety and that of her fiancé.

He got no reply. After two months, he tried again. But his emails bounced back, and she was no longer listed in Tel Aviv. He did not know where she had gone.

Six months later, the agency sent Brooke Chandler to Beirut as business consultant Adam Chase. His transformation was complete. Anit Rahal had vanished from his life.

W
hen Terri Young knocked on his door, Brooke was staring out the darkened window. Momentarily startled, he stood swiftly. Seeing Terri, he inquired, “Doesn't anyone around here sleep these days?”

“I'm not in the mood.” She sat down. “Frankly, I'm wondering if I just facilitated a suicide attempt.”

“You facilitated a dignified escape. When Washington goes up in flames, I'll be drinking martinis in Beirut.”

Terri did not smile. “I want to know what happened there. The rest of it.”

Her crispness did not hide her concern. He owed her that, Brooke supposed—at least some of it. This seemed to be a day for exhuming his past.

Reluctantly, Brooke began to speak.

Even at this remove, his memories were vivid.

On a beautiful Saturday in June, Brooke and Michelle Adjani had driven his convertible along the Corniche. The palm-shaded promenade was filled with lovers and tourists admiring the sparkling azure of the Mediterranean, the bright flowers dividing the avenue. A breeze rippled Michelle's hair. Stretching like a cat, she lay back against the headrest, smiling with her eyes shut as the sun warmed her sculpted face. She was lovely in a way that only Lebanese women can be: almond eyes; long, jet-black hair; a lissome figure. A clothing designer and the daughter of a
wealthy man, she lived for beauty and pleasure. Innocent of Brooke's life of secrets, Michelle seemed to have no secrets of her own, no sorrow to impinge on her zest for life. She was twenty-five, Brooke reflected, the last year of his own age of innocence.

“Tell me, Adam,” she murmured, “can you imagine a world better than this?”

“I no longer try,” he answered. Which was true enough.

They had lunch at the Sporting Club, consuming enough wine, lamb, and fresh vegetables to call for a nap on the beach. But Michelle, like Anit, craved the sea. When her feet touched the sand she inhaled deeply, then ran toward the water, young and carefree and alive. Watching, Brooke had a quick, piercing memory of Anit. After eight years, he thought, her image should not be so strong.

Michelle reached the water, her bikini concealing no more than it should. There was something lovely, Brooke thought, about a woman whose innocent pleasure in life's gifts embraced her own body.

It's a shame that I don't love you, he thought. But even if I could, the rules for Adam Chase forbid it. So Michelle was part of his cover—to the extent Lorber had not blown it—unaware that the beach enabled Brooke to gauge who might be watching him.

Later, he would meet with Khalid Hassan. That he feared for Khalid, and for himself, was no longer a matter of routine caution.

Michelle was scampering toward him. She kissed him swiftly, her damp hair and skin smelling of salt. “Stay with me tonight, my sweet.”

Brooke cupped her face in his hands. “For a while,” he said gently. “I'm meeting a colleague for breakfast.”

Michelle gave him a look. “On a Sunday? Is your colleague a woman?”

Smiling, Brooke shook his head. “An American. In America, commerce never sleeps.”

Michelle lived along the water in a high-rise apartment, a gift from her father.

Brooke left near midnight, the scent of their lovemaking still on his skin. Instead of retrieving his car, he took the elevator to an underground garage, then slipped out a service entrance and into the cab whose driver performed such services on call.