After the First Death (23 page)

“So your father gave you the package and sent you out to us and told you nothing else?”

The boy shook his head. “Nothing.”

Artkin glanced at Miro but Miro had nothing to say, nothing to ask.

“Tell me what you know of this—this affair.”

“I know that you’re holding the kids on the bus. It’s been on radio and television. That’s where I learned about it. My father’s been busy all day, at Delta and out here. He came home once to see if I was all right and to tell me not to worry. They were worried at first that some of the kids whose fathers are officers at Delta might be kidnapped. He told me to stay in the house. They sent a guard to the house to watch the place.”

“You stayed in your home until your father summoned you in the middle of the night?”

The boy nodded, chin trembling slightly now.

“What else did he tell you?

The boy shook his head. “Nothing.” His eyes grew bright.

Miro knew that tears would come next. He felt contempt for the boy. He felt contempt for all these American boys and girls who led their selfish, unthinking lives and thought they were so smart and brave until situations developed that showed their true worth. Yet, Kate had not cried.

“Did your father say whether they were ready to bargain or whether they would attack?”

The boy shook his head again.

A pulse throbbed visibly in Artkin’s temple. Miro wondered: Has he seen something I have not seen?

“It will be bad for you if we learn you are lying,” Artkin said, a quiet menace in his voice. Miro knew that quietness, that menace. “We have ways of finding out about lies. You see this hand?” Artkin held up the maimed left hand, the two finger stubs evil looking in the van’s dim light. “It is a crippled hand but it can still do such things to a body. A tender body like yours.”

The boy flinched at the word
tender.
And the tears were very close now, gathering in the corners of his eyes but not yet spilling.

“I—I don’t know—anything,” he said.

“I know these generals at Fort Delta, how clever they think they are. They have sent you here for a purpose. They thought your youth would serve its purpose. How do I even know you are the son of a general? But we will find out, of course.”

Artkin motioned to Miro, indicating he should go to the door of the van.

“Think about your situation for a few moments,” Artkin told the boy, his voice still calm and deadly. “Think very seriously. Then we shall talk again.”

He and Miro stepped out of the van into the moisture of morning. Although it had not rained, there was a patina of wetness on the tufts of grass growing through the railroad ties. Morning dew. Artkin glanced at his watch. “Seven thirty,” he said. “We must wait another hour and a half.”

“Even though Sedeete has been captured?” Miro asked.

“Yes,” Artkin said. “My orders were to wait until nine o’clock and then take action. It doesn’t matter whether
Sedeete is captured or not as far as the signal is concerned. Perhaps someone else will send it. We must wait.”

“What of the boy?” Miro asked.

“He may be innocent. He may be what he appears to be—the frightened son of one of those generals. Perhaps they want to bargain. Who knows about Americans? Perhaps they cherish their children more than their agencies.”

Miro said nothing. He sensed this was a time of waiting. He looked toward the bus. The tape on the windshields was like a soiled bandage. He was still astonished that the girl had tried to drive the bus from the bridge. Who would have thought she could be so daring, so brave? He frowned at the thought. But she had been foolish really to try such a thing. Stroll was now in the bus with the children and the girl. He had been reluctant to let Stroll take command of the bus: the bus was his own responsibility.

Artkin sighed, blowing air out of the corner of his mouth. A bird’s cry split the air, another answered. Or were these signals? Miro looked to Artkin.

“When we go back into the van, I will apply the fingers to the boy. It will not take much to tell us whether he is not what he seems to be. If he can tell us nothing further, then we will wait for nine o’clock.”

Miro wanted to ask: What then? But dared not. He had already asked Artkin more questions today than in all the time he had known him.

They crouched there a moment longer, letting the morning air caress their flesh. The bird’s cries multiplied, clawing at the air. A breeze rose, shifting the bushes and brush. Were human hands assisting the breeze? How Miro wished to be away from here.

“Now, the fingers,” Artkin said.

The boy cracked after thirty-two seconds. But thirty-two seconds of the fingers can be a lifetime, Miro knew. He was, in fact, surprised that the boy had resisted that long a time. He had not looked particularly brave, had seemed frightened to the point of fainting even before the fingers began. But he had held on all those seconds. Miro had ticked them off in his mind, trying to blot out the boy’s screams, remembering when they had tested the fingers on each other in the classroom. Only a taste, the instructor had said. But a small taste was enough: five seconds, six, an excruciating pain that took the breath away, loosened the bowels, penetrating the deepest parts of the body.

Thirty-two seconds and then the boy, retching almost to the point of vomit, spittle in the corners of his mouth, began to talk. In small bursts, brief gasps, because the pain lingered for a moment or two after the fingers had stopped and there had to be a pause for a gathering of breath, a resting place during which the body repaired itself. And then he told them what Artkin wanted to know. The planned attack. By special forces. At nine thirty.

The boy spoke in quick, sharp spurts, tripping over words in his eagerness to talk. They are so eager to talk after the fingers, eager to show that they are cooperating, telling everything that must be known so that the fingers won’t be used again. Sometimes they babble because they do not have much to say, they do not have much knowledge to impart. Like the boy. He kept repeating the same words. The telephone call. Nine thirty. Special troops. The telephone ringing in the office. Special troops. Then his voice dribbled into silence, although small sounds continued to issue from him as if he were seeking more words to tell, anything to hold off the fingers.

“Details,” Artkin commanded. “Details.”

The boy made a mewing sound like a small animal seeking to please its master but not knowing the master’s language.

“Are they attacking by air? Will they come from under? From the ends of the bridge?”

“I don’t know,” the boy said, finding words now. “I don’t know.” His voice desperate.

And then Artkin became gentle, his old gentleness that even Miro was still unsure of.

“Take it easy,” he told the boy, voice suddenly tender. “I am sorry you had to be hurt, but it was necessary. You must understand that. Now, tell me. Be calm and tell me all.”

The change in Artkin’s manner had an abrupt effect on the boy. He sighed, blew air out of the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t know anything except what I said. They didn’t tell me anything. My father said if I wasn’t told anything, then I couldn’t betray anything. But the telephone rang. I heard him say that the special forces were ready. I could see it was important, the way he listened to the voice on the telephone. He wrote something down. Tried to hide it with his hand. But I saw it. He had written down nine thirty. Then:
A.M.
after it. I pretended I didn’t see it.”

“What about helicopters?”

The boy shook his head.

“Will they come from under the bridge? Or either end?”

Again, a shake of the head.

“You are certain of the time?”

“Yes, yes.” Eager, eager to be of service.

“It was written down?”

“Yes. Ink. A ballpoint pen.”

“Are you certain you saw it clearly? Perhaps you made a mistake. Perhaps you saw it upside down and the time was six thirty.” But it was already past six thirty.

Artkin said nothing more, seemed to be pondering the situation. He looked at Miro, nodding his head, a look that said he had learned the truth of the situation. The boy had told the truth. He was certain that the boy was hiding nothing. Miro knew what would happen next. It was time for the fingers again. No one could be trusted in these times. Not even children. Even children could be what they seemed not to be.

The boy read the message in Artkin’s eyes, saw the reality of what had to be done. He began to whimper, cowering, his chin wobbling.

“Oh no,” he said.

Miro turned away, concentrated on a dial on the monitor. The screams as usual were loud and long and lingering. Miro ticked off the seconds. Fifteen, sixteen.

The boy sagged, clutching Artkin’s knees.

“What else?” Artkin said. “What else?”

Seventeen. Eighteen.

The boy could only gasp, mouth open, a fish mouth out of water, drowning in air.

“Nothing,” the boy gasped, the word a strangled cry, as if torn from his insides.

“Good,” Artkin said, releasing him.

Miro looked at the boy. For the first time, the boy turned his eyes to Miro. Miro had never seen such a look in anyone’s eyes. Was there a word for such a look? It was beyond terror or horror or pain. A look of such anguish, such regret. As if he suddenly saw his true doom, a doom that went beyond the fingers, beyond even death. A look that left the boy hollow, empty. A look that said: What have I done? The look of the betrayer.

Miro could not look at him anymore. As he lowered his eyes, he wondered why he felt such a sense of shame, like a piece of baggage he had not meant to pick up and then found that he could not put down.

The attack
came without warning.

At 8:35.

A moment before the attack began, Kate was wiping the nose of a child who was quietly crying for her mother. Artkin was sitting in the van, dozing. But not really dozing; this was a trick of his, to rest, to replenish his strength, sitting with arms dangling loosely, eyes half closed. Stroll sat in the doorway of the van, alert as usual, looking down, studying the space between the railroad ties at his feet, trying to spot activity down there. The boy sat on the floor of the van, his back against the rear door, staring ahead with dull eyes or perhaps not staring at all but contemplating something unseen, invisible in the cluttered van, invisible but terrible. This was how Miro had seen them all a moment before the attack, having gone to the van to ask Artkin if he was certain there were no more drugs because the children were becoming restless again and Kate was not useful any longer. Since the little boy had been shot, she was like a sleepwalker, going through the motions, her actions and reactions mechanical, as if drugged like the children had been earlier. Artkin had shaken his head without breaking his concentration, and Miro had sighed, stepping over Stroll to return to the bus. In the bus, he started to reapply a strip of tape that had come loose from a window.

Miro did not react immediately to the strange sound that reached his ears. The sound was a
whoosh
, not an explosion but a muffled eruption of noise close by the bus. He would have reacted instantly to gunfire, a grenade bursting, the whine of a sniper’s rifle. He paused, listening. There was only silence. He returned to his work, lulled by what the naked boy had said: the attack would come at 9:30. But one half hour too late, according to Artkin’s plan. Then, another
whoosh
, this time enveloping the bus, and the bus seemed to move slightly, the way a great ship might lurch as it bumps into a pier. Miro reached for his pistol and ran toward the doorway.

The doorway was shrouded in sudden fog. He fumbled with the lock, opened the door. The fog swirled into the doorway, heavy, thick, clinging and moist. A chemical stung Miro’s eyeballs.

“Artkin,” Miro cried.

The gunfire started. More than gunfire. Explosions, the quick stutter of machine guns. Sirens. The throbbing of a helicopter; two perhaps. Detonations that shook the bus. An orchestra of chaos, deafening to the ears, jarring the senses. Miro withdrew from the doorway and turned toward Kate. She was only a few feet away, her eyes suddenly alert, alive. Do not trust her, he told himself, remembering how she had tried to drive the bus to freedom. But he needed her now. She could get him out of here. The attack was on. The naked boy had fooled them, fooled Artkin, and now they must fight the enemy’s fight and not theirs.

“Kate,” Miro yelled, brandishing his automatic. He raced to her. The children were screaming, but their voices were barely audible in the din surrounding them. Miro thrust the gun into Kate’s ribs, saw her wince, jammed it further. “Stay with me. A false move and I
shoot and you are dead.” He pushed her to the doorway.

The winds had started. The turbulent winds of the helicopter’s blades were dispersing the fog, tearing it to shreds, as if the fog had been a massive cotton blanket. Pieces of the cotton drifted in the air. Miro tore strips of tape from the windshield. He had to see what was going on outside the bus without leaving it. The bus would be safe for the next few moments at least. The soldiers knew the children were in the bus and would not fire into it or toss grenades inside. But they would have to enter sooner or later, and Miro knew he had to be out of here. He looked through the windshield, through the patches of clear space left by the dispersing fog. He saw Stroll’s body on the tracks at the entrance of the van. His body was curled up, his arms clutching his chest. Miro knew he was dead: the attitude of a dead body is unmistakable. Antibbe, now Stroll. What of Artkin? But Artkin had the boy, just as Miro had Kate.

Miro stepped to the door, Kate still beside him, the gun still in her ribs. A soldier loomed before them, the doorway empty one moment and then filled with the soldier the next moment. The soldier seemed to erupt from the ear-splitting noise that assaulted them, seemed to be part of it all. The soldier held a grenade in his hand; Miro knew that grenade: the kind they called the stun grenade. The stun grenade did not throw shrapnel—it knocked out anyone caught in its concussion, knocked them out for a short time but long enough for an enemy to take over. Miro could not let the grenade explode. He raised his gun but before he could fire the soldier suddenly crumpled and fell backward, the grenade flung from his hand onto the tracks. Looking through the windshield again, Miro saw Artkin at the door of the van, revolver in one hand,
holding the limp boy in the other. Artkin had saved him. Again.