Cost of Life (14 page)

On the drive back to Sandy Springs, Hayley had her car radio set to NPR. The reporters were analyzing the Flight 816 situation with input from their special guest, Alfred Cummings, retired director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

“In scenarios such as this,” Cummings explained, “it's vital to remember that the success factor for terrorism is just about zero percent. It reminds me of the old adage about insanity—you know, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? That's terrorism.”

“If it is so unsuccessful, then why does it persist in our modern world?”

Cummings made what was intended to be a noise of pensive rumination, but in actuality…

“Sounds like he's farting through his nose,” said Xana.

But Hayley didn't laugh, didn't even twitch a grin. She was still livid—and not without reason. Sure, she had been protected from watching Xana beat the living shit out of Yuri, but even outside the pawnshop she could still hear his shrieks of agony. When the ambulance pulled up to the curb shortly thereafter, Hayley wasn't at all surprised. She overheard Xana give the paramedics her statement—something along the lines of “he fell”—and then witnessed the elderly Russian, who had given her maybe the best bottle of soda she probably would ever drink, being carted on a stretcher out of his own charming place of business.

His face was a crushed rose.

Xana held two envelopes, one of which was scribbled with code and one of which was scribbled with ten names. It was this second envelope that had a corner wet and dark with blood.

“Here's a riddle for you,” she had said to Hayley on the walk back to the car. “Why would a prison notorious for never releasing anyone, ever, suddenly let loose ten of its inmates? And when were they released? Was it a year ago? Was it last week? Here's an even better riddle: Why would these ten ex-inmates, enjoying a freedom they never expected to see again, then hijack an American plane?”

Hayley's apathetic reply was a mumbled “I don't know.” She couldn't clear her mind of Yuri's broken face. She glanced down at Xana's hands. The woman must have washed them clean before the EMTs showed up. Finally, she followed up her mumble with a clearer, louder “How many times have you done that before?”

“Done what?”

“Never mind.”

And they didn't talk again until they'd rejoined the traffic on the freeway and Xana had felt the need to comment on a radio guest's noises, as if they, above all, with the madness of this day's events, were in any way relevant. What was she, a sociopath?

Del Purrich had warned Hayley. “Be careful around that woman,” he'd said, just before the intern boarded the elevator to meet Xana in the lobby. “She's a black hole.”

Hayley had assumed Del was exaggerating—or at least referring to a version of Xana Marx that no longer existed, the soused Xana Marx, enemy of houses. When Hayley had volunteered to be Xana's chaperone, she'd done so enthusiastically. Someone with Xana's vast, unqualified skill set
belonged
in the FBI, and her ousting had surely been premature.

But now…

They took the exit off the freeway. Soon they would be back at the office. Jim Christie would ask for a report and Hayley had no reservations about providing him with every detail of the truth, from the insubordination at the airport to the—yes, use the phrase—
acts of torture
committed in the pawnshop.

The discussion on the radio suddenly went silent. Xana had clicked it off.

“You think there's a fixed line between right and wrong,” she said.

“Are you asking me?”

“I don't mind being judged. I don't mind it because I don't find it especially relevant. Sometimes you got to cut off a leg to save a life.”

“And sometimes you don't.”

“You think you could have persuaded Yuri to give you the names without the use of force? Go ahead.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'll be him,” she said, and then added, in a Russian accent perfect in match to the old man's, “Persuade me.”

Was she teasing her? Hayley glanced over at Xana. The woman was serious.

“Well, Special Agent O'Leary? You want something?”

Hayley pulled over into the nearest parking lot, which turned out to be a derelict gas station, and braked the car. If she was going to do this, she was going to do this.

Could she do this?

It was only, after all, her life's ambition.

But which psychological tactic was the best to take? Which would be the one that a man like Yuri would best respond to? What did Hayley know about him? He was old, obviously. He was an expat. He sold other people's detritus.

He gave her a free glass of ice-cold Coke on a hot day.

Empathy.

“Yuri,” she said, “do you—”

“Stop call me that.”

Hayley blinked. “Excuse me?”

“That is not real name.”

“I'm sorry. What would you like me to call you?”

“Ronald Reagan.”

“Your real name is Ronald Reagan?”

“You ask what I want to be call.”

“All right…um…Ronald, do you have a family? Of course you do. Everyone has a family.”

“My family is dead.”

“Yes, but at one time they weren't. At one time they were alive. Right?”

“I cannot argue with this statement.”

“And you would do anything for them, right?”

“What would you do?”

Hayley blinked again. “Excuse me?”

“For this list.” Xana waved the envelopes in the air. “What would you do to have names?”

“You mean, like a trade? Well, Ronald, if you give me the names, what you'll get in return is the knowledge and satisfaction that you've not only helped save scores of innocent lives but also, you know, spared their families all that grief.”

“That is for later. What would you give me now?”

“What do you…are you asking for money?”

“I am not asking for money. Here. I will make it easy for you.”

Xana reached into her pocket. She took out her crushed pack of cigarettes and her lighter.

“I don't understand,” said Hayley.

Xana slid a cigarette out of the pack and held it aloft. “Smoke this and I give names.”

“Very funny.”

“ ‘Scores of innocent lives.' ‘All that grief.' Where is the funny?”

“OK, OK, I get it. He was pushing you to drink and now you're pushing me to smoke and neither of us could do what he wanted, blah blah blah, but I've got to tell you—it's a bit of a false equivalency. If I smoke that cigarette, I'll probably die. You taking one drink wasn't going to kill you and potentially would save those same lives. Plus—
plus
—beating the truth out of him doesn't guarantee he even gave you the right information. It just proves he wanted you to stop beating him.”

Xana nodded—and then flicked awake the lighter—and then dipped the bloody corner of the second envelope into the flame.

Hayley cried out for her to stop, but Xana merely opened the car door and leaned the envelope out into the midday sun. The paper curled into black ash. Hayley tried to reach across Xana to grab at the envelope, but her efforts were hopeless.

“Stop!” she cried again. “What are you doing?”

But it was too late. Fire devoured the names, the paper, everything, and really in no time at all. Xana let the breeze pick up the charred remains of the envelope. They flew away like a horde of gnats.

“Why did you do that?”

“Careful,” Xana replied. “You don't want to shout yourself into a coma. And besides, you still have this.”

She handed Hayley the first envelope, the one with the coded inscriptions.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“I don't know. Give it to a code breaker. Because he used elements from lots of different alphabets, that should make it a little hard, but we've got some really good cryptography software. I mean, sure, they're still trying to decipher KGB intercepts from the 1970s, but who knows? Maybe you'll get lucky.”

Hayley's eyes welled up. “Oh my God…are you so spiteful that you're willing to sacrifice all those people just because I insulted your pride?”

“What are you talking about? I offered you a trade. You didn't smoke the cigarette. You made your selfish choice. I made mine.”

“Jesus. You
are
a sociopath.”

“Like I said, I don't mind being judged.” Xana pulled her door shut. “Don't we have places to be and all that jazz?”

“They're going to arrest you for obstruction of justice!”

“I doubt it. Like you said, beating the truth out of Yuri didn't guarantee it was even the right information. But let me ask you this: While I was pretending to be him, you saw I had the envelope with the names on it in my hand. Why didn't you just take it?”

“Just take it? That…that wasn't what we were…I mean…”

“It would have been breaking the rules?”

“Exactly!”

“But you would have gotten the names. And with those names, you would have been able to provide the FBI with invaluable intel. The problem with thinking inside the box, Hayley, is that you're restricted. You think these Chechen sons of bitches are worrying about restrictions?”

“What are you saying—because they're breaking the law, we have to break the law to even the playing field? There is such a thing as doing the right thing.”

“And that's exactly what you should tell all the families after their loved ones have been executed: ‘I'm sorry for your loss, but you can take heart that at least we did the right thing.' I'm sure that will be a tremendous comfort. Now find me a pen.”

Hayley reached into her pocketbook and handed Xana an FBI-branded click-top pen, which the older woman promptly used to write in the margins of the remaining envelope the list of ten names she had, of course, memorized.

Travis Quick, Seat 18D, needed to eat.

As if the stress of this hijacking weren't enough to tax his volatile blood sugar, he hadn't so much as noshed on anything since breakfast, and breakfast had been a bowl of cereal he'd scarfed down right before helping Nell secure Amy-Poo in her car seat so they could maybe be on time for once, and to the airport no less. But now he needed to eat.

His brain felt swimmy.

Sure, he could have packed a bag of gummi bears or something, but he had counted on a snack midway through the flight. Weren't snacks included in the exorbitant fees he had paid to fly his entire family 927 miles? So what if Baby Amy had been free—his round-trip ticket and Nell's round-trip ticket and Zelda's round-trip ticket, all together, had ended up totaling almost two thousand dollars. At least their expenses once they arrived would be covered. Nell had won a week's stay at the resort through a radio contest. Travis couldn't remember the last time he'd listened to terrestrial radio. His daily commute was forty-five minutes long each way and he spent all of it in silence. It was the only silence he was guaranteed. He loved his family deeply, desperately, but lately he wondered if he loved that forty-five-minute bubble of silence just a little bit more.

This vacation was long overdue. Thank you, 93.3, WATL!

But then, of course, the other shoe had to drop, didn't it?

Terrorists.

Of course.

The last time his blood sugar had probably been this low was in college. That incident had ended with him in the infirmary and the eventual diagnosis of type 1 diabetes.

His vision shimmered, then fogged over. He rubbed at his temples.

“Dad, are you OK?”

“I'm good, peanut,” he replied. “Just a headache.”

Nell was on the phone with her best friend, Judith. She was imploring Judith to round up the other PTA mothers and get them to bid on her and Travis and Zelda and Amy once the website went live. Just about every passenger with a phone was probably right now involved in a variation on the very same conversation, but Travis wasn't paying attention to them. He wasn't even paying attention to Nell. He was paying attention to the side of his right hand. He couldn't feel the side of his right hand. He rubbed it against his armrest. Nothing. He lifted it up. The hand felt twice as heavy as it should have felt. It dangled at the end of his arm like deadweight.

Goddamn it.

Something brushed up against his left elbow. Two terrorists he didn't recognize were heading up the aisle to the rear of the plane. Travis didn't stop them, didn't ask them to grab him a cookie, didn't say a word. The terrorists had already murdered three people. At least three people. No.

Speaking of death, the two new terrorists had traveled up the aisle to pick up the corpses of the two insurrectionists from where they lay by the lavatory door. Thank God the airplane had a second lavatory up front, as Trevor—or anyone else—wouldn't have dared step too close to the bodies of those fearless, foolish men. And now that their bodies were being removed, well, he still doubted anyone would use that lavatory. There was blood spattered across its door.

In the time it took the terrorists to off-load the first corpse, Trevor lost sensation in his mouth.

In the time it took the terrorists to off-load the second corpse, Trevor passed out.

Nell didn't notice. She was too busy trying to negotiate with Judith exactly how much the other PTA wives each needed to contribute to keep them alive. Would five hundred dollars be enough? That was how much they had all pitched in after that hurricane had devastated New Orleans. They'd each pledged $250 after that earthquake had devastated Haiti. Would a thousand dollars be enough? No one wanted anyone to die, of course, but these were tough economic times. Judith offered assurances that she'd max out her MasterCard to help, but she couldn't vouch for the others…

Nell didn't notice, and at first, neither had Zelda. She was caught up in an activity of her own, namely a colorful game on her tablet in which Ariel the Little Mermaid had been kidnapped and it was up to the other Disney princesses to rescue her. Zelda had reached Level 10 and unlocked her favorite princess, Belle, and was fighting through a mob of cretins in Beast's castle when her father's chin bumped her shoulder.

“Dad? Dad? Mommy!”

Zelda shook him. Zelda shook him again. He didn't wake up.

Baby Amy woke up. Baby Amy began to scream.

Nell hung up midsentence. She cried out for help.

Help came racing toward them in the form of an old man with a gnarled left limb. Bislan quickly assessed the situation and responded with a shake of his head and a frown.

“This is very problematic,” he said.

“He has diabetes. All he needs is some juice! Please!”

“I already discussed this with you. Food and drink are out of the question.”

“Is anyone a doctor?” Nell cried out. “Anyone?”

Bislan looked around at the passengers. “
Is
anyone a doctor? If so, I would like to discuss with you a few other matters.”

No one spoke.

Perhaps there were no doctors.

Or perhaps there were and they were too frightened to step up.

“What will happen if he isn't treated?” Bislan asked her.

She looked past the old man to her daughter, and then back up to him. She didn't have to say a word. Her gaze spoke volumes.

“Very problematic,” said Bislan.

He took out his pistol and aimed it at Trevor's face.

Zelda screamed. Nell went to restrain Bislan but he swiftly elbowed her in the nose, knocking her back.

“Look at this as a lesson in commerce,” he said. “Our sale is about to go public. We can't have people bidding on goods that are potentially useless. That would be fraud. You wouldn't condone fraud, would you? Of course not.”

Then he pulled the trigger.