Due Preparations for the Plague

The hostage hoax, the State Department said, is the final ruse of a handful of desperate terrorists …

Lowell remembers that. He remembers watching the news when that statement was made.

There is no evidence, the president told the nation in September 1987, of any survivors of Air France Flight 64, apart from the children who were disembarked in Germany. The final landing was somewhere in Iraq where the plane was blown up. Although Iraq has not permitted the Red Cross … nevertheless our Intelligence sources have confirmed …

Lowell finds himself pausing at an arrivals monitor, scanning for flights due in from Paris.

“Daddy.” Amy tugs at his sleeve. “Come on.”

“Just a second, Amy.” Air France seems to have changed its numbering system. He sees AF 002, AF 006 … but of course flight AF 64 was going to New York, not Boston.

“Hey.” Someone bumps into him. “People been coming through yet?”

“What?” Lowell says. The man who has collided with him is disheveled and out of breath. He points to the monitor.

“Flight from Frankfurt. It’s landed. People through yet?”

“I don’t know,” Lowell says.

“What flight you waiting for?”

“I’m not. I’m just …” Why is he interrogating me? “Look.” Lowell points to the large automatic doors of frosted glass. “There are people just coming through now.” But he cannot resist looking back over his shoulder as he leaves the terminal, and the man waiting for the flight from Frankfurt is not moving toward the glass doors, but is still watching Lowell. This means nothing, of course.

Though it could mean something.

It might mean something.

Lowell decides he will not go direct to the subway with the children, in case he is being watched. “Here’s our bus,” he tells Amy, and they get on the free shuttle that moves between the terminals and they get off again at terminal C.

“This isn’t our stop,” Amy says. “The subway is two more stops.”

“Jason’s hungry,” Lowell says. “Want some French fries, Jason? Want a Coke?”

“French fries!” Jason grins. “Yummy yum.”

“Yummy yum yum,” Lowell chants. “Want some French fries, Amy?”

“Okay,” she says, wary.

There are numerous fast-food stands, none of them appealing, but he buys fries and Cokes for the children, a coffee for himself. He sets the blue bag on the floor and keeps it tightly between his feet, though an inordinate number of people seem to knock it in passing. He tries to imagine his father, with a sports tote between his ankles, having coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He cannot visualize this.

“Okay, kids,” he says. “Let’s go.”

They take the shuttle to the MBTA stop, then the Blue Line to State. They change to the Green Line, change again at Park Street, take the Red Line to Union Square.

Lowell’s car, a slightly battered pickup with a steel hold-all across the back, is where he left it in the parking lot. He unlocks the steel coffer. Nothing missing. He puts the sports tote inside, turns the key in the padlock, changes his mind, unlocks it, takes the tote with him into the cab. “Footrest,” he says. “Pillow for your feet.”

“What’s inside the bag, Daddy?” asks Amy, clicking her seat belt shut.

“Just stuff. Can you do up Jason’s belt?”

He could take one quick look, he thinks, and then, if necessary, if he deems it necessary, he could toss the blue container and its contents into a dumpster. He sits there, his hand on the ignition key, thinking. The owner of the car in the next parking space arrives and the door of his white Nissan taps the side of Lowell’s car. Is it deliberate? The Nissan driver wears a plaid shirt and has a bald patch. Lowell waits for him to leave, analyzing the plaid: vertical stripes and horizontal, green, black, gray, a thin vertical red line.

“Daddy,” Amy says. She is pulling at her hair.

“Right.” He starts the car. “Amy, sweetheart, don’t do that to your hair.”

The soundtrack of Babe comes softly through the bedroom wall.

“Excuse me,” the little pig is saying to the sheep in his gravelly-sweet voice, “but would you ladies mind …?” And then Jason’s high-pitched laughter, and Amy’s voice-over in her big-sister tone: “He thinks he’s a dog.” This must be the fourth time this weekend, but the children never tire of the video of the little pig that could.

Outside, from the Somerville night, come the sounds of horns, brakes applied almost too late, fights, shouts, the bells of St. Anne’s on the hill. Lowell has the glazed look of a man masturbating in the cinema. He stares at the wall. His hand, inside the blue sports tote, itemizes three objects, angular, bulky, hard-edged: two thick ring binders and something unstable and irregularly shaped in a drawstring bag that could have been, that was once, a pillowcase. Lowell pulls out the pillowcase bag and stares at it. Rows of knights, with lances poised and pennants on their helmets, gallop toward each other in the lists: this was his own pillow until he was six years old and started school. At the mere touch of the worn cotton, he can smell his bedroom, feel the weight of his father sitting on the end of the bed, smell his mother’s perfume as she bends over to kiss him good night. Once upon a time, his father begins. Once upon a time, in the springtime of the world, when Persephone, the beautiful daughter of Zeus and Demeter, was gathering flowers with her maidens in the field, she was kidnapped and carried off by Hades, King of the Underworld …

Lowell examines the pillowcase.

Attached to the drawstring at its neck is a luggage tag, crudely lettered in black felt marker. He recognizes his father’s handwriting.

AF 64

Operation Black Death

Bunker Tapes & Decameron Tape

Broadside. Blunt weapon, Lowell thinks, with a sense of having absorbed the explosion of Air France 64 in the gut. He bends forward over the sports bag and the zipper jams and the tapes refuse to be crammed back in, slithering around in their fabric casing—how many? how many are there? five? six?—clacketing, plasticking, live inside the pillowcase, miles of nylon ribbon, they are videocassettes, he can tell that through the cloth, but confessions? obscene revelations? death scenes? what? The pillowcase is damp and clammy to the touch now, revolting. He shoves the whole toxic blue bundle under his bed and paces the room. He counts slowly to ten, forward and back, breathing deep. His heartbeat is fast and erratic. Through the wall, he hears climactic music from Babe, the film nearly done. Supper, he thinks. They’ll want supper. I can’t take them out. I can’t leave the bag in the house. Pasta, he decides.

He has spaghetti, he has a jar of Ragú sauce somewhere at the back of the fridge.

How can he leave the room with the bag unguarded?

He lies on the floor and pulls the wretched thing out from under the bed. Its limbs sprawl, its heavy end lolls like a broken neck, the drawstring bag containing the tapes juts from the slit. He pulls at the stuck zipper and gets the bag open again. His hands feel bloodied. He pushes the ungainly pillowcase properly inside the sports tote and takes note of the two other items, ring binders, both black, both barely able to contain the thick wad of pages inside them. He takes one out and opens it.

It is labeled, on the first page, Report Dossier: Classified. He flips through the pages. Almost all are typed, but there are often just one or two paragraphs to a page. In the bottom right-hand corner of each page is a brief notation—report filed—in his father’s handwriting. At the top of each page is a date. He reads one at random:

February 19, 1977

Re Air France 139 (Tel Aviv to Paris) hijacked to Uganda, June 27, 1976: Nimrod confirms that Sirocco was involved; confirms sighting Sirocco in Entebbe on June 30. Nimrod believed Sirocco killed on July 4 in Israel’s rescue operation, but subsequently received reliable evidence that Sirocco involved in shipment of arms from Libya to IRA (November ’76). Believes Sirocco is Saudi, but possibly Iraqi or Algerian. Holds four passports that we know of: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Algeria, Pakistan, at least one of these presumably legitimate. Fluent in Arabic, Urdu, English, and French. Holds forged carte de séjour for France. Was a trainer in Mujahadeen camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan in early ’70s. Has also recently been identified in newsclip of Dal Khalsa separatist Sikh demonstrations in Amritsar in late ’76. Highly proficient in explosives and chemical warfare. A brilliant mercenary but not a fundamentalist zealot, Nimrod believes. Believes Sirocco could be bought, but advises caution. Sirocco is dangerously loose cannon. Advises meeting between Sirocco and Salamander. Action taken: Information passed up chain of command.

And on the next page:

March 16, 1977

Directive received from highest level: Sirocco known to be dangerous and untrustworthy, but use of rogue agent warranted, given present situation; necessary ritual of risk; need for accurate information on terrorist cells in Middle East and re training facilities on Pakistani/Afghanistan border outweighs other concerns. Action taken: Nimrod to approach Sirocco, arrange meeting with Salamander.

And on the next page, in his father’s handwriting, a brief note:

March 19, 1977

Meeting arranged. Probable site of first meeting: Peshawar.