Due Preparations for the Plague

“Cass,” Samantha says gently. “Do you know Lowell? How do you know Lowell?” But Cass’s mind is off with the birds in the marsh.

“Her name was Isabella Hawthorne,” Jacob says. “I know she was leaving a husband and son. I know nothing else about her and never wanted to.”

Samantha can feel heat rising, she can feel the low thrilling hum of new data coming in from new directions, which means new curves can be plotted on the graph. “This is so strange,” she says. She knows the airline’s passenger manifest by heart: Isabella Hawthorne. Next-of-kin: Lowell Hawthorne, son. “It’s strange because I tracked down the son a few weeks ago. I’ve tracked down Lowell Hawthorne, but he won’t return calls.”

Jacob stares at her. “Don’t touch this, Sam.” He begins massaging the front of his skull at a frantic pace. “Oh God,” he moans. “Have you got something I can tie over my …? I need to block out the light.” He rocks his head against one of the beams.

“This might work.” She takes off the linen jacket she is wearing and folds it, once, twice, a thick bandage. She puts it over Jacob’s eyes and uses the sleeves to tie it behind his head. “Does that help?”

“Mmm,” he moans. “Thanks. Can you drive us?”

“Yes, of course,” she says. “Jacob? Do you think if you met with Lowell Hawthorne, it would help?”

He pulls the jacket from his eyes and stares at her in anguish, his left eye horribly bloodshot. “No,” he says. “I don’t think it would help. The repercussions of what you’re doing terrify me, Sam.” With a groan, he re-covers his eyes. “You might as well post a sign on the Internet: I’m going after classified secrets. I’m stirring up trouble. Come and get me.”

“But they can tell us things, all the next-of-kin can. There are things they don’t know they know.”

“I know more than I want to know already. I’m in agony, Sam.”

“It’s unresolved grief, you know it is. Just listen to me, Jacob. It’s weird how many links and cross-connections there were between passengers, and between the families of passengers. It defies statistical odds. It has to mean something.”

“I don’t want to know what it means,” Jacob says. “Sam, Sam.” He is rocking his head in pain. “I need my medication. I’m begging.”

“Sorry,” she says. “Oh God, sorry. Let me help Cass down first, and we’ll go.”

5. Lowell (#ulink_5d5e63d3-c2dc-50f5-b72d-cebccd910cea)

Even before Lowell speaks, Samantha has an intuition that the phone call will be momentous, but that is because she is already in a state of febrile and heightened alert. She hears the under- and overtones when people talk. She imagines an aura of electromagnetic feelers extending invisibly from her skin and waving about her like angel hair, like the sustenance system of certain sea creatures on tropical reefs: as water rakes through their unseen silken mesh traps, all that is needed stays. Information is falling toward her. It adheres.

“Samantha?” Lowell says, and she recognizes his voice instantly. She has heard it often enough on his answering machine. She has scripted future conversations they will have.

An avalanche starts with a pebble. Samantha thinks of the random searchlight of Cassie’s lucidity as setting scree tumbling, loose drifts of it that pull scattered data along in their train. They gather density and speed. Clusters of detail roll over each other and cling. They generate force and the force intensifies. Disparate pieces of information cohere, connections pick up momentum, new facts are exposed. Samantha has a premonition that critical mass has been reached, that the accumulation of data has hooked up isolated circuits, that currents are fizzing around the elaborate latticework and traplines of her research, sparks jumping gaps, missing information being sucked into the black hole of her intense need to know.

“Um … it’s Lowell,” he says.

Samantha holds her breath.

“This isn’t easy,” he says.

“I know.” She can barely speak, and an inner catechism warns: Don’t breathe. Don’t frighten him off. “Not for any of us. It’s like picking a scab.”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, that’s what it’s like.” That is exactly what it is like, he thinks. As soon as he starts to think about the hijacking, fresh bleeding begins.

It is strange how a silence can suck at two people and how it can vibrate between them and how much information can be sent and received through the mere sound of air moving in and out of lungs. And because something is already understood between the two of them, that the thing itself—the blown-up plane, the horrible deaths—is beyond comprehension and beyond language, because of this, they do not feel any awkwardness in a prolonged silence.

Samantha waits.

“In my case,” Lowell says, “the death was … the death itself … the death of my mother was not the major thing.” His breath, turning labored, is loud in Samantha’s ear. “Look,” he says. “I don’t think I can manage this, after all. I don’t think I can talk about it.”

Samantha listens to the plosive beat, rapid and uneven, of air entering and leaving his lungs. She risks saying, “Is that because of Avi Levinstein?”

Lowell makes a small violent sound—he is hyperventilating—and Samantha is afraid he will hang up.

“How do you know about Levinstein?” he asks at last.

“I know his son. I only just learned that the woman Avi Levinstein took with him to Paris was your mother, so I know this must be a painful—”

Lowell hangs up. A week passes and then he calls again.

“You have no idea how angry I was,” he tells Sam without preamble. “I wanted both of them to die.” His voice is faint, and Samantha has to strain to hear. “To make a wish like that and have it come true. Do you see what that makes me?”

Samantha says nothing.

“Do you understand what that makes me?” he persists.

“I understand what you fear it makes you. But it was natural for you to be angry—” She can almost hear Lowell twisting in the fires of his own savage guilt. “Look,” she says, “I don’t know if this might help, or if you’ll want to do this. And I’m not at all sure he’ll want to do it either. But I know Jacob Levinstein well. He’s a phoenix. I mean, he’s one of us, the children who survived. We have an Internet club. We call ourselves phoenixes because we rose up out of the ashes, so to speak. Jacob’s the son of Avi—”

Lowell makes a strangled sound, somewhere between laughter and pain. “Are you crazy?”

“He feels pretty much the same way as you do, I think. It might clear the air for both of you if you—”

“I didn’t call to talk about my mother.”

Samantha suddenly wonders if Lowell’s mother was one of those who caressed her as she passed, when the hijackers were pushing the children along the aisles, when the children were being herded, prodded with rifles, when the rough hands of gunmen slapped them, when the gunmen stuffed rags into sobbing mouths. Samantha finds herself wondering which hands might have belonged to Lowell’s mother, because hands had come from everywhere as the children passed, hands stroking them, touching, giving blessing, sending messages that she bears in her body still.

“I’m really calling,” Lowell says more calmly, “because you said you had information about my father—”

“It may not be the kind of information that you want.”

“I’m sure it won’t be,” Lowell says. “But you said there was a woman in Paris who knew my father, who claims to be—you said I have a half-sister.”

“I think so, yes.”

“Is she claiming this, or are you?”

“She is. But she claims she has proof. You didn’t know about her?”

“No. And I don’t believe her, but I’m curious.”

“I’ll understand if you’re not ready for this,” Samantha says, but Please, she is thinking, please stay on the line, please give me something, another crumb, two crumbs, I can wait for the trail.

“My father’s first wife died,” Lowell says. “And they never had children. My mother was his second wife and I was an only child.” He pauses, assessing possible evidence, pro and con. “But he was stationed in Paris for several years,” he concedes. “During his first marriage.”

“He had an affair with a Frenchwoman. I’ve semi-confirmed this from declassified documents. The CIA kept files on a woman who worked at the American Embassy because they considered her a security risk. She had a daughter by an American, a diplomat or an agent, it isn’t clear which. Françoise claims that was your father. She says she has photographs to prove it. You can make contact with her through our website if you want.”

“I have to think about it.”

“She seems to know a lot about your father. She says he’s in Intelligence.”