Cost of Life (13 page)

Bislan continued:

“As you all by now are well aware, we are not, I'm afraid, on our way to Mexico. I have never been to the Yucatán myself, but I have heard very good things. Personally, I would have chosen to visit during the winter months, but that's just me.”

Maryann and Deja were tending to the injured coeds as best they could, but without access to the painkillers and ice-packs from the kitchen, the best medical support they could provide was to elevate broken bones and remind those with bloodied noses to lean forward so as not to choke.

One of the coeds, smaller than the rest, had blood leaking from the corner of her right eye. She dabbed at it with her sleeve and tried not to cry. She knew the salt in her tears would have been like fire.

She tried not to cry. She failed.

“Have you used this time to phone your loved ones to reassure them you are well? Good. Family is important, and not only in times of crisis. Family is the one of the two gifts we all receive when we are born. Family and life. Only a fool squanders his gifts.”

Rhonda considered rising to aid the Australians in the back, but one look from Murad cautioned her to stay seated. Drake, meanwhile, had to bite down on his lower lip to keep from screaming. To have been so close to freedom and then to have it snatched away? To have two brave men down and be utterly helpless to save them?

Rhonda patted him on the back of his hand to soothe his restlessness.

Drake didn't want to be soothed.

Drake wanted revenge.

“You see,” said Bislan, “it's all about numbers. Everything is, really. I denied this fact for most of my life, but it's true, and I'm here to reveal that truth to you. Some of you will hate me for it. Some of you will thank me. In mathematics, this is known as an additive inverse, and in a universe that favors equilibrium, additive inverses are as inevitable as equilibrium itself. And don't we all loathe equilibrium! Equilibrium implies fairness and we'll have none of that, thank you very much. It's why communism will only be a theory. Fairness is an anathema to the human spirit and to illustrate this truth, very soon you are all going to be the focus of a rather remarkable social experiment.”

Experiment? Davey Wood's nitwit younger brothers, Kenneth and Kip, perked up in their large seats. The round-faced adolescent, on the other hand, had a more realistic understanding of just how unbelievably fucked up their situation was. Davey seethed with aggravation. He hated his face, he hated his brothers, he hated this trip their parents had forced them to take, he hated the fact that their parents had forced them to take this trip on a separate plane from theirs to take advantage of some kind of “package deal,” and he especially-especially-especially hated the fact that he had been too cowardly to rise up during this insurgency, that he had proved his high school tormentors right, that someone like him would never end up with someone like, say, that screen-melting stewardess Addison…not unless he did something heroic. If he did, maybe he could impress her. He could impress
everybody.

“We all love experiments and why not? They are the purest form of expression we have for our irrepressible curiosity. And what are experiments other than a type of competition we engage in against ourselves? Maybe that's why I am so fond of your country. Is it any wonder that the Great Experiment in Self-Government is also the breeding ground of dog-eat-dog competition? Enough of my philosophizing. You want to know the conditions of the experiment. But let's put it into more American terms. Let's not call it an experiment. Let's call it a game.”

Addison didn't want to know the conditions of the experiment or the game or anything. She wanted to soak in a bubble bath scented with lavender while Wynonna Judd's greatest hits sang from her stereo. If she knew anything, Addison knew this: Nothing bad could happen to a person in a bubble bath, especially not while fortified by Wynonna Judd's mighty voice. In her mind, as she sat there in her seat on this plane, Addison played and replayed her and her two sisters' favorite Wynonna song, “Tell Me Why.” In her mind, she and her sisters were children playing dress-up in their mommy's diaphanous, earth-tone dresses and mile-long shoes, and she and her sisters were singing harmony.

While the bleeding Aussies were screaming out for help.

Addison shut her eyes. She inched up the volume on her memory-stereo and with her mother's tan dress lolling off her prepubescent body she lowered herself into the bath.

“All games have players, pieces, stakes, and rules. Ladies and gentlemen, the good news is you don't need to know the rules of the game and that's because the bad news is that you're the pieces. There will be thousands of players. And I think you've already figured out the stakes.”

Francisco still had one foot in his nervous breakdown, but enough of him had returned that he knew just the thing to counter the drone of this madman's words and, at the same time, perhaps add a modicum of comfort to those who were suffering. He spoke some of the first words he ever was taught: Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Others around him joined in, drowning out the warble from the intercom. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. On earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

“At precisely twelve o'clock, the game will begin. Call your friends. Call your family. Call the news media. Blog about it. Post on Twitter. Let everyone know. At precisely twelve o'clock, anyone who wishes—anyone in the world—may access a website we have set up to bid on any of you. They will be able to pledge any amount of money using any major credit card. They can bid as many times as they'd prefer on as many of you as they'd like. The game will last for three hours. Those of you who, after the three hours have passed, have accrued the top five highest bids will be set free. Those of you in the bottom five will be executed. It all begins in less than an hour.

“I wish I could give you some food or drink in the interim, but I'm afraid that, for the sake of logistics, you will have to remain hungry and thirsty for a little while longer. Don't worry, though. Neither I nor any of my men will eat or drink in front of you. We want your stay here to be as pleasant as possible. Anyway, I shall leave you to your phone calls.”

Archie shivered. Since when had it become so chilly on this airplane? When he and Mickey had left Sydney, the temperature there had been just under fifteen degrees Fahrenheit—not cold, true, but far from warm. July in Sydney meant the nadir of winter. But they were now in the American South (or thereabouts). Where was the god-awful humidity they had read all about in their travel guides? Where was the broiler-oven sunshine? Archie shivered again.

Mickey asked him something, but his words were pebbles sinking into the sea. Archie's son. Such a solid young man he had turned out to be…though, oh, what a marble-mouthed terror the boy had been as a toddler! Like that one time, God, when Mickey, who couldn't have been more than two years old, spilled Vegemite all over Archie's architectural blueprints and then smeared shapes along the crisp paper with his tiny fingertips, and all Archie had done was leave the room to take a piss. And how the child had been so proud of his handiwork, holding it up for his dad's approval when the man had reentered the den! Archie's lips curled up at the memory. Even catastrophe could be amusing in retrospect. Surely one day he and Mickey would sit in Paul's Bar down by the water. They'd have a pitcher of Coopers Pale Ale on the table between them and they'd recount the time the two of them were on a plane that got hijacked and even though they'd both been frightened, they knew that fear was nothing but bluster and bluff and together, Father and Son, they'd taken down one of the terrorists—there was no denying the facts—and now here they sat, smiling and laughing and downing some beer, but Christ on a cross, this beer was so cold, so cold. So cold.

During the insurrection, Larry had been confined by the two men there to a seat in business class, and this was where he remained for all of Bislan's speech.

He still held his phone in his hands.

The call from Jim Christie was still on.

The FBI had overheard the rebellion, the gunfire, the speech, everything.

On his way from the flight deck, Bislan hadn't spotted Larry, but on his way back, he stopped to exchange words with his associates and couldn't help but notice the pilot sitting beside them.

“Captain Walder! What a pleasant surprise! I would have expected to see you with your family. Please tell me your presence here at the front of the plane was not to serve as some kind of lookout for the rebellion.”

“No,” Larry replied, and handed him the phone. “You've got a call.”

Bislan cocked his head in curiosity and took the phone—but before speaking into it, he made sure to accomplish what he had stopped here to do, namely tasking his pair of laptop jockeys, Alvi and Ansor, with the onerous task of corpse disposal. Without a word, they picked up their empty duffel bags and headed to the tail of the airplane. Only then did Bislan address his mystery caller:

“Hello?”

“This is SAC Jim Christie with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Who am I speaking with?”

“I think you know exactly who you're speaking with, SAC Jim Christie.” Bislan returned to the solitude of the flight deck and rested his stress-worn bones in the captain's chair. “You may not know my name…but you know who I am.”

“Then at this point, sir, on behalf of the government of the United States of America, I request that you and your companions disembark the aircraft immediately. This doesn't need to go any farther. No one else needs to be harmed.”

“But Special Agent Christie, that's just not true. We
need
to be harmed. How else do we learn to avoid pain?”

“How about by using our common sense?”

“Ah, but common sense only can prepare us for common danger. You shelter a child from the uncommon evil of this world and you spoil him for life.”

“Yeah, I overheard your little speech.”

“Excellent! That will save me a great deal of repetition, although I would imagine by now at least half of the passengers have shared what's to come with their friends and lovers and co-workers, not to mention the cable news outlets. Hmm. I wonder if any of them recorded my speech. I should turn on CNN and find out.”

“You know we can't let you proceed with your ‘experiment.' ”

“Oh, Special Agent Christie, you
have
to let it proceed. The consequences for interference are severe.” Out of the corner of his eye, Bislan watched the two body bags, now full, being carried off the plane. “As I told the passengers, it's best to think of this as a game.”

“This isn't a game.”

“No? Read John Nash. Read Leo Hurwicz. They
insist
life is a game and they've won Nobel Prizes. Who are you or I to argue with pedigree?”

“Yeah, whatever. Listen, since we're on a timetable and all, do you mind if we cut through the bullshit?”

Bislan frowned. “I may not be an expert, Special Agent Christie, but insulting the man with the hostages doesn't strike me as effective negotiation.”

“Hostages? Let's be real. You don't think of those passengers as hostages.”

“No? What are they?”

“Your marketing team. And right now you've got them advertising this little experiment or game of yours and the more people they tell—you know, those friends and lovers and co-workers—the more TV networks like CNN carry the story, not to mention the online news aggregates and Facebook and Twitter, and soon you'll have the whole world paying attention so when your website goes live, everybody's going to want to check it out.”

“People do like a spectacle.”

“And everybody's got a credit card. I assume you'll be accepting all major credit cards on your website.”

“And you are going to allow us to do so. It would be unfortunate if one or more of your credit card oligarchies was asked by your government not to comply. Quite unfortunate. On the other hand, we do not discriminate as to our customers. Anyone is welcome to bid. Even the Federal Bureau of Investigation! There's no minimum and there's no limit.”

“Well, that's good, because their families and friends will want to bid as much as they can. They don't want to risk their sister or father or best pal being one of the bottom five. They'll bid a lot and then the other people will need to top them because they don't want
their
loved ones being in the bottom five and then there are those hundreds of millions of strangers watching all this go down and they won't want anyone to be in the bottom five so a lot of them will bid too—maybe not as much, maybe only a few bucks, but a few bucks spread over a hundred million people is going to add up, don't you think?”

“When you spell it out like that, it does sound rather clever.”

“But what happens after the three hours are up? You release five hostages and you kill five hostages and you've still got over a hundred fifty left. What happens then?”

“Oh, isn't it obvious? We play again. And then again. And then again. And then again. Each round getting shorter and shorter as the numbers dwindle smaller and smaller. In the end, of course, we still keep a few of the passengers alive. Otherwise what leverage would we have to deter you?”

“And then what happens? You fly away? You disappear?”

“With the sum we will have raised, I think we'll be able to go wherever we want. If you had couple billion dollars in your bank account, where would you go, Special Agent Christie? Honolulu? The Amalfi Coast? I'll bet you could buy yourself a couple of islands near Indonesia.”

“Wherever you go, we'll find you.”

“No. You won't. But come now. You didn't want to talk with me so you could cast idle threats. You called to negotiate.”

“It is the official policy of the United States government not to negotiate with terrorists.”

“Yes, but I'm not a terrorist. I'm an extortionist. And it has been the official policy of the United States government to negotiate with thieves like us ever since you first unfurled your Stars and Stripes.”

“Fine. What do you want?”

“I don't know. What could you possibly offer to counterbalance a multibillion-dollar payout? Hmm? Want to sell me a monument? I've always been rather fond of your Statue of Liberty.”

“Yeah, it's not for sale.”

“You may want to reread your Adam Smith. Everything is for sale. Everything and everyone. How much are the lives of all these people on this plane worth to you?”

Silence. Then:

“I'm going to need some time to discuss this with my superiors.”

Bislan smiled. “Special Agent Christie, take all the time that you need. You know where to find me.”

He ended the call.