What Changes Everything (6 page)

       The phone rang, jarring, and Clarissa grabbed the receiver in order to silence it, wishing she could silence everyone around her so easily and claim for herself a moment to think. "Ms. Montague," said a man‟s voice. "Hi. My name is…" A journalist, she knew immediately. It was as if they had a special accent. Wordlessly, she passed the phone to Mikey. He spoke loudly, waving one arm for emphasis. Again, his words didn‟t stick with her. And then he hung up.

       And now Ruby was next to Clarissa, rubbing her eyes and wiping her nose with a knotted fist, suddenly a bereft child instead of the tough 28-year-old Clarissa had gotten to know. Ironically, she identified with this side of Ruby more closely. She put an arm around the younger woman, who seemed to be trying to contain herself, and failing. She was rocking in a way Clarissa understood she couldn‟t control. Clarissa embraced her more tightly, but it was like trying to hold back a breaking wave. Angie, looking miserable, rose to get Ruby a glass of water.

       "Those bastards," Ruby said in a voice raw as a skinned knee, a voice that seemed to carry its own echo.

       "Let‟s stay optimistic," Bill Snyder said. "Let‟s hear what the FBI has to say when they get here."

       So Bill was still here, Clarissa thought.

       "That‟s right. Let‟s wait," Angie said as the doorbell rang over her voice. "Want me to get it?"

       Clarissa shook her head. "I‟ll get it." But she waited, arm still around Todd‟s daughter, until she felt Ruby gather herself. Then she rose and opened the door to a couple at her threshold. They didn‟t look like FBI agents. The woman wore dress pants and a suit jacket and carried a large leather purse, but the man was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. They looked about 30, only a couple of years older than Ruby. Weren‟t FBI agents supposed to be large and pale and middle-aged? Wasn‟t it a job requisite?

"Clarissa Montague?" the man asked.

"Yes."

"I‟m Jack. This is Sandy."

       And now the informality of first names. Something else she didn‟t expect from the FBI, not that she‟d ever had any expectations about FBI agents in her home. "Okay," she said, but her legs responded silently:
not okay. They
were rooted in place. The presence of these two at her doorstep made everything too real.

       Jack extracted his ID from his back pocket. "You were expecting us, yes?"

       
No, I wasn‟t expecting you. Not you,
nor any of this.

       She nodded and turned. They followed her into her kitchen.

       "This is my brother, Mikey," she said. "And my stepdaughter Ruby and her partner, Angie. And my husband‟s colleague Bill." She paused. "And these are the agents. Jack and Sandy." The barest and most incomplete of introductions had already worn her out. "Do you want something?" she asked. "A cup of tea or…"

       "No, we‟re good," Jack said.

       
Good? They each t
ook a chair. Fortunately, the kitchen table was large enough to seat eight, Clarissa thought. Todd had considered it overkill, but Clarissa loved a big kitchen table as much as she loved the city, though they seemed like opposing impulses. The city was layer after endless layer of life, an impossible promise of infinity, while the kitchen table was more personal, inclusive and nurturing.

       This was supposed to be the nurturing stage of her life.

       A thick silence waiting to be born into something darker swallowed the room. At last, Jack spoke. "I‟m sorry about the circumstances that bring us here."

       That stilted sentence seemed to prompt Sandy into action; she opened her purse and pulled out a notebook. "When is the last time you had contact with your husband?" she asked.

       "Contact? I—" Clarissa cleared her throat. "I already answered a lot of questions on the phone."

       "I‟m sorry. We need this in person."

       Clarissa inhaled. "We spoke on the phone last night. It was about 10 p.m. my time. It was morning of the next day in Kabul. I guess it must have been a few hours before…" She broke off, unable to put it into words.

       "What did you talk about?"

       
It was not about, it was around. We talked around an argument about safety, and our
future.

       "Just small talk," Clarissa said.

       "Can you remember anything specific? Anything at all might be helpful. For example, did he mention anything unusual, or any planned outings or meetings?"

       God, what had he said that she‟d be willing to share with these strangers sitting in her home wanting to sift through her underwear drawer? She struggled to remember precisely. "An Afghan woman was coming to see him in the office. He wasn‟t sure what she wanted. He also was to meet some woman from Texas who wanted to visit a refugee camp. And he mentioned his assistant, Amin. He‟s very close to Amin. That‟s it."

       "Do you need Amin‟s contact info?" Bill Snyder asked, and then Clarissa‟s attention wandered as he provided it and Agent Sandy wrote.

       "What about you?" Jack asked Ruby after several minutes

       "I haven‟t spoken to him in maybe two weeks." Ruby‟s voice sounded shaky. "At least

not directly."

"Directly?" Jack made an openhanded gesture that indicated puzzlement.

       "We‟re playing an online chess game," Ruby explained. "He makes a move in the evening his time and I make a move in the evening my time. He made the last move, about four days ago. I …" Ruby began to choke up, restrained herself with effort. "It was my turn next."

       "Did he mention anything in particular to you? Anyone he was meeting, or anything going on in his life?"

       "We really only talked about chess," Ruby said. "We talk about light things when he is overseas. When he‟s home, that‟s when he tells me more serious stories."

       "Did he ever bring up being threatened in any way?" Jack asked, his tone casual.

       "Not really."

       "He knew—k
nows that
part of the world is not the safest," Clarissa said. "But he always said he felt well protected. And he was getting ready to quit. Is going to quit. He‟s going to work from New York after this rotation." She glanced toward Bill Snyder, expecting him to nod in acquiescence, but his face remained expressionless, noncommittal, and she fleetingly wondered if he‟d tried to talk Todd out of leaving the fieldwork. "You know, Todd worked on
behalf of
Afghans," Clarissa said. "Do his kidnappers get that?"

       "Simply being a foreigner—"

       "I know. I know, of course," Clarissa interrupted Jack.

       "This is a business," Jack continued. "He‟s an American and he was accessible. A target of opportunity. It‟s that simple."

       "What was he doing?" Clarissa turned to Bill Snyder. "I mean, when they…"

       Bill Snyder shrugged. "Getting ice cream, Amin says."

"Christ," Clarissa said.

The kitchen fell silent for a moment. "And you?" Sandy asked Mikey.

       Mikey shrugged. "Clari‟s my only sibling. My only family, really. We‟re close," he said. "But I wouldn‟t know about Todd‟s life day to day, beyond what Clari might mention."

       Sandy turned to Angie. "Tell me about your connection to the family."

       "Well, Ruby and I, we live together."

       "How long have you known each other?"

       "I lived with Todd and Ruby for a while when I was a teenager," Angie said

       "How long?"

       "About a year."

       "What were the circumstances?"

       Angie shrugged. "Things were not going so great at home. Todd agreed to take me in. He fed me, watched over me, became a surrogate dad. Probably more than he bargained for."

       "We understand you work as a psychic," Jack said.

       Angie looked as surprised as Clarissa felt. How had they found out so much so quickly? Though she didn‟t ask the question, Jack seemed to anticipate it. He shrugged in a silent answer.

       "I‟m an RN," Angie said after a minute. "I work with a hospice. But yes, I do psychic fairs on the side, that kind of thing. That‟s all."

       "So you get premonitions?"

       "Sometimes," Angie said hesitantly.

       "Can you describe one for us?"

       "I hope this is not the primary basis of your investigation," Clarissa said, her voice cool.

       "Yeah," Angie said. "I actually don‟t think this will be helpful."

       "They‟re just trying to think of everything," Ruby said in a soothing way that almost made Clarissa smile. She‟d seen this side of Ruby with her father, too: a torrent of emotion almost as if she were a still rebellious teenager and then, at lightning speed, everything under control.

       "Okay, well," Angie began, her voice sounding doubtful. "Last week there was this guy on the subway platform. It was about ten minutes after five, and I was headed home from work; he was wearing earphones and dark jeans and swaying to the music on his iPod and he looked like, you know, a regular commuter, a little trance-like, into his own isolated world, but whatever. And suddenly he stared right at me in a piercing way that made me think… well, that he was dead. I know it sounds strange, but that‟s how it felt. And that he wanted me to do something, tell someone…"

       "Go ahead," Jack encouraged.

       "I looked around, and the platform was crowded and I had no idea who to approach, or what to say if I did, and then my train came, and I looked behind me, and I couldn‟t see him anymore, you know, like he was lost in the flush of travelers, so I got on the car, and I figured, oh well, that‟s it, I must be imagining things."

       Sandy had stopped taking notes, and Clarissa agreed with that decision. P
lease, she
wanted to shout. Le
t‟s get serious here.

       "Yes?" Jack said encouragingly.

       "Two mornings later, I took one of those free newspapers they hand out at the subway entrance, I think it was AM New York, and I was flipping through it, and there it was. A photo of a man who‟d stepped onto the tracks at my station shortly after 5 p.m.
My man."

       "Wow," Sandy said, though she didn‟t sound particularly impressed.

"She‟s pretty amazing," Ruby said.

"Have you had any feelings about Ruby‟s dad?" Jack asked.

"No, no." Angie looked embarrassed. "God, no."

       "Now can I ask you a few questions?" Clarissa asked. "Because while all this may serve some purpose that is not occurring to me now, it seems clear what we really need to focus on is what‟s happening on the ground in Kabul. Who are you talking to? Where do you think my husband is being held, and by whom?"

       Jack nodded. "I know it‟s frustrating at this stage. And though there‟s a lot we don‟t know yet, we also aren‟t fully in the dark. There was, as you know, an explosion on the street where he was standing. Two people were killed, but we believe the attack was mainly diversionary, and the primary goal was to kidnap your husband. Kidnapping is a big business in Afghanistan. As I‟m sure you know."

       "So they‟d been watching him?" Ruby asked.

       Jack shrugged. "What we know is that he was pushed into a white Corolla station wagon and driven away. The Taliban has publicly claimed responsibility; a so-called spokesman contacted Al Jazeera and the AP. So he may be in Taliban hands. Then again, he may not be."

       "They would claim responsibility for something they didn‟t do?" Ruby asked.

       "Lots of smoke and mirrors over there," Jack said. "We‟ll know more soon. Anyway, the first 24 to 48 hours is the most dangerous."

       Clarissa felt light-headed. She tried to think of herself as a rock, solid, connected to the ground.

       "You want some water, Clari?" Mikey asked.

       "I‟m okay. I‟m just—I wasn‟t prepared for this."

       "No one‟s prepared," Jack said. "We‟ve got people all over the world, including some based in hairy places, and everyone ignores what that means until they can‟t anymore." Clarissa looked at him, trying to read into his words, but his expression was bland. "I don‟t want to sugarcoat anything," he said. "You won‟t end up appreciating that from me. But at least they‟ve already made the initial contact. That‟s good."

       "Good?" someone asked, maybe Bill Snyder, in a voice threaded with sarcasm.

       "It‟s the beginning of an address. They haven‟t given any demands yet. We think we know where he‟s being held—I mean, the general area."

       "Where?" Ruby asked.

       "Southern Afghanistan."

       "That
is
general," Mikey said.

       "So you don‟t think he‟s been moved into Pakistan?" Bill Snyder asked.

       "Not at this time," Jack said. "There have been enough of these cases that there‟s pretty much a pattern. Though, as I‟ve indicated, we aren‟t completely sure which group has him, and that impacts whether he‟ll be transferred to another group, and his eventual location, and where they are going to want to hold him for the long-term."

"What long-term?" Clarissa worked to keep her voice from going shrill.

"Crazy fundamentalists, any way you look at it," Mikey muttered.

"But it matters which ones," Jack said.

Clarissa cleared her throat so she could speak. "What long-term?" she repeated.

       "We have good connections on the ground. We‟ve learned a lot in the last several years," Jack said. "One thing we need to get squared away. If there is a chance to rescue him, do you want us to go ahead?"

"What do you mean? Of course I want him rescued."

       "What he‟s talking about, Clarissa," said Bill Snyder, "is a military rescue. And he needs your permission because sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes hostages die in rescue attempts."