by Anne Fortier
Taking a few sharp breaths of air I eventually managed to push those useless thoughts aside and focus on the phone. Although the last thing I felt like doing was talking to strangers, the situation was serious enough to warrant a phone call.
After scrolling through Nick’s endless contact list without recognizing anyone, it finally occurred to me to check the speed dials and see whom he considered his closest and dearest. Surprisingly, a number he called “Office for an Argument” was at the top of the list. Next came “Boy Wonder” and “Goldfinger.” In the end I gave up speculating and dialed the first number.
The phone rang for a while before someone picked up, and I had already braced myself for a Dubai answering service when a sleepy male voice said, “It’s about time.”
“This is Diana Morgan,” I quickly countered. “Calling on behalf of Kamal al-Aqrab. I assume you know him.”
There was a violent rustle at the other end. Then the man said, in a voice somewhere between worry and anger, “What’s wrong? Where are you calling from?”
I looked around at the abandoned cafeteria. “Finland. The Suomussalmi Hospital.” I paused to steady my voice. “I’m afraid there’s been—”
“Is my son alive?”
The question hit me right in the heart. “Oh! You’re—”
“Answer my question.”
Mr. al-Aqrab’s hostile tone jolted some of the courage out of me. “Yes, but we don’t know—” Again, my voice faltered. “He had severe hypothermia—”
“Stay where you are. I’ll be right up.” Mr. al-Aqrab ended the call.
And that was where Dr. Huusko eventually found me—lying over Nick’s phone in the empty cafeteria, too heavyhearted to move. “Here.” He held a gray photo printout in front of me. It showed a woman in full stride, pulling off a motorcycle helmet as she came through the glass doors of the hospital. “This is the person who brought your boyfriend here. Do you know her?”
I leaned forward to scrutinize the photo. It was taken from above, but I recognized the silver pixie crop right away. Nick’s guardian angel was the angry cat woman from Istanbul. She had tried to avoid us by staying upstairs all evening, but Fate had found her nonetheless, to put her to the test. Had she passed with distinction this time? It was a matter of perspective. Breaking the rule of being first in battle, the queen of the Baltic Amazons had left her sisters alone with Reznik’s goons in order to save her son.
“Well?” said Dr. Huusko.
I shook my head, avoiding his eyes. “No, I’m sorry.”
“Come.” The doctor motioned for me to get up. “I’m going to let you be with him. He’s still in a coma, but the brain is a strange thing.”
Lying in a hospital bed in a room by himself, Nick appeared to be connected to every piece of medical equipment in the building. And he was so deathly pale I should never have recognized him if I hadn’t known it was him.
Walking to his bedside, I placed my hand gently upon his, carefully avoiding the intravenous line. There was no reaction. Nor did he make any discernible movement when I bent over and kissed him on the cheek.
Dr. Huusko took Nick’s pulse the old-fashioned way, ignoring all the expensive machines. “He’s a strong man with a strong heart,” he said, making a note on a chart. Then he turned to face me, the look in his eyes a little less severe. “I don’t know what happened to you two. I’m not sure I want to know. But the police will have questions. You better start thinking of answers.”
Alone with Nick at last, I lay down next to him on the narrow bed, inching as close as I could. Despite everything, he still smelled like him. I tried to cast my mind back to that morning, when I had woken up next to him in our warm cocoon of hotel comforters. I’d had a strong feeling then that nothing outside our little nest really mattered too much anymore; I had finally found the center of my universe.
“I love you so much,” I whispered into his ear, hoping the words would reach him, wherever he was. “Please come back. I’m so sorry.”
It was I who had wanted to go to Finland, who had been hell-bent on following Granny’s trail to the end. And when things went wrong, I had hesitated and fumbled while Nick took on Reznik’s men.
“How can you not want to learn how to defend the people you love?” He had asked me in the ruins of Mycenae. “I can show you some easy tricks.”
I had been too angry to listen. And now the grand machinery of heaven had taken my arrogance and slammed it right back in my face with blinding accuracy.
MR. AL-AQRAB ARRIVED AT daybreak. When I heard the gruff demands and indignant outcries in the hallway outside, I assumed it was the police coming to interrogate me. But then the door to the room was pushed open and four men came in, with Dr. Huusko and two agitated nurses trailing closely behind.
With his stern, all-business manner Mr. al-Aqrab looked so unlike the man I had seen the week before, walking through the Çira?an Palace reception in a baseball cap, I had to reach all the way back to the intense face in Mr. Telemakhos’s scrapbook to be convinced it was really him. Dressed in a suit and tie almost identical to those worn by his three associates, he paused in the middle of the floor without even acknowledging my presence, then walked up to Nick’s bed with a grimace of helpless fury.
“Who did this?” was his first question, addressed to no one in particular.
“Reznik and James Moselane,” I replied, glancing at Dr. Huusko. “They followed us here.”
Mr. al-Aqrab muttered a curse.
I waited for a moment, expecting him to try to talk to Nick, or at least touch him. When he didn’t, I said, “It shouldn’t really surprise us, though, should it? Wasn’t that the plan all along—to use us as bait?”
Mr. al-Aqrab turned toward me slowly, as if he could barely believe my nerve. “And you are?”
“Diana Morgan.” I held out my hand. When he did not take it, a bubble of helpless fury burst in my head. “Surely, you remember me from the detective report. I imagine you and your”—I nodded at the other men, who all stood around with frowns of latent aggression—”intelligence department know more about me than my own parents do.”
“Right.” Mr. al-Aqrab reached into his jacket. “How much do I owe you?”
I stepped away from him. “For what exactly?”
He pulled out his checkbook. “For walking out that door right now”—he pointed over his shoulder with a gold fountain pen—”and erasing it all from your mind.”
Although the tone of our exchange had hardly been civil, I was so baffled by his rudeness the room became a blur around me. “I wouldn’t take a penny from you,” I said, forcing out the words, “if I were a beggar in the street. You were the one who did this to Nick. And had it not been for his mother, pulling him out of a snowbank and bringing him here, he would be dead now.”
I spoke with furious passion, and Mr. al-Aqrab swayed briefly before squaring his shoulders and tightening his tie. “This is neither the time nor the place—” He gestured at someone else, and only then did I see the medical team coming into the room behind Dr. Huusko.
“What are you doing?” I asked, stepping a little closer to Nick.
But it was only too clear what they were doing.
I tried to block their access. “Don’t take him away! Please! Dr. Huusko has everything—” Seeing that no one was taking any notice of me, I turned to Mr. al-Aqrab and exclaimed, “Haven’t you done enough to him? It’s freezing cold out there.” When he continued to ignore me, I blocked his way, forcing him to pay attention. “All right. You’re taking him back to Dubai.” I was so upset I couldn’t even soften my voice. “I’m coming, too.”
Mr. al-Aqrab could not have looked more appalled. “You? Why?”
I glanced at Nick, struggling to hold back my tears. “Because he’ll ask for me when he wakes up.”
Another contemptuous once-over put me in my place. “I doubt it. Now, excuse us—”
Working without hesitation, the medical team unhooked Nick from all of the equi
pment in the room and efficiently rehooked every line to their own portable devices. When they wheeled the bed out of the room, I ran after them down the corridor. “I’m serious,” I said to Mr. al-Aqrab. “Don’t you dare—” I reached out and tried to grab the bed rail. “Stop! You don’t understand!”
In a smooth, effortless maneuver, Mr. al-Aqrab managed to cut me off right there, while the medical team continued down the corridor and disappeared around a corner. “Oh, but I understand completely,” he said, putting a patronizing hand on my shoulder. “Nick is my son. He has that effect on women. Here.” Reaching into his jacket, he took out a wad of money and pressed it into my hand. “Buy yourself a little something from him. He would like that.”
I DROVE REZNIK’S SUV back out the Raate Road in the morning sunshine, only to find that the rental car was no longer stuck in the ditch and that all traces of violence had been erased by new snow. Gone was our luggage, my coat, the Historia Amazonum, Granny’s letter … not even a footprint was left.
Driving on, I managed to doggedly retrace my steps to the Amazon safe house despite the fact that everything looked different in the daylight and the makeshift street signs had disappeared.
As I rolled down the winding driveway I saw right away my trip had been in vain. Not only were there no vehicles left in the driveway, just a jumble of half-erased tread marks, but the house itself was gone. Where the sad old mansion had stood there was now a pile of charred rubble.
Getting out of the car, I walked around a bit in the knee-deep snow, looking for signs of life. There were still thin columns of smoke coming from the burned remains of the building, but no identifiable objects stood out among the slag.
Standing there, staring at the ruin, I felt oddly numb. What had I expected? That the Amazons would still be here, busily scrubbing bloodstains off the floor?
Making my way around the foundation of the house I noticed an old gray barn tucked away in the woods. It was a long, tall building—perhaps even bigger than the house itself had been. Approaching through the snow, I opened the barn doors with cautious curiosity.
Inside the building were dozens of empty horse stalls and heaps of soiled straw on the floor. More than anything, an overturned wheelbarrow and a broken sack of fodder suggested a hasty evacuation.
At the back of the stable, another door stood open. On the other side of it was an enormous empty room with a concrete floor. My first impression was that something crucial had been kept in this grand space with cathedral ceilings—something that was now gone. But then I noticed the three ropes hanging from roof rafters and … the trapezes.
I suddenly heard Otrera describing the traveling circus that had once been the Baltic chapter of the Amazons, and I understood that this lofty room had indeed held something special: women training. Not a single mirror or floor mat softened its severity; this had not been a showroom, but a place for focus, exertion, and pain.
The graffiti covering the walls supported my suspicion. Most were in languages I didn’t understand, but two were in English. One read, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The other read simply, “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
Walking over to a chin-up bar on the wall, I grabbed hold of the cold metal and tried to pull myself up. I couldn’t. I had done it as a child, playing Amazons with Rebecca in the garden, but then … as an adult I had happily listened to those who said women weren’t expected to do that kind of thing.
Walking back through the stable, I looked everywhere for forgotten items—any small souvenir to give me strength to go on. But everything had vanished. In the end I picked up a handful of grain from the leaking fodder bag and put it in my pocket.
Where was the Baltic chapter of the sisterhood now? I wondered. And what had happened to James? Did he go up in smoke like the other Amazon secrets in the house?
Chilled at the memory of the bloody conclusion to Reznik’s war with the Amazons, I turned to walk back outside. As I did so, I caught sight of something hanging from a nail next to the door. My coat. Baffled, I took it down and inspected it. And sure enough, there they were in my pockets, all the things I thought I had lost: my money, my passport yet again … and Granny’s letter.
Sitting on the overturned wheelbarrow, I opened the envelope then and there. The letter was not long, and the shaky handwriting suggested Granny had been weak when she wrote it.
Diana—
How old are you now? I am trying to see you before me, but I cannot guess how long it has taken you to find me. I wanted to talk with you again, and explain everything, and hear how you are doing, but it is too late now. Katherine Kent says you are happy. This gives me peace.
I am going to give you my jackal bracelet, but don’t assume I want you to become an Amazon. I just want you to have the choice. Too many women grow up without choices. My greatest wish for you is a life in liberty. Remember to keep your choices alive; don’t let them get weak. And don’t let others convince you that you have none. Remember: Courage has no age.
I don’t know where I will be when you read this, but if I can, I will find you and whisper in your ear. The first thing I will whisper is this: Never give up. Goodness will always outrun evil in the end.
With all my love, Kara
PART VI
EQUINOX
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Then much-enduring Odysseus, in his hand accepting it, easily strung the bow, and sent a shaft through the iron. He stood on the threshold, and scattered out the swift shafts before him, glaring terribly, and struck down the king Antinoös. Then he shot his baneful arrows into the others, aiming straight at them, and they dropped one after another.
—HOMER, The Odyssey
OXFORD, ENGLAND
WITH RAIN-STREAKED INDIFFERENCE, THE DREAMING SPIRES greeted me as if I had never been away. The November air was a bit cooler than it had been when I left three weeks ago, and everyone looked a tad more miserable as they scuttled from building to building, hugging their books. Apart from that, everything appeared much the same. The porter barely looked up from his sports section when I stopped at the lodge to get my mail.
“Hello, Frank,” I said as I excavated my pigeonhole, amazed at the scarcity of letters after what felt like a long absence. “Any news to report?”
He shook his jowls with feigned commiseration. “Can’t think of any. We’re supposed to have sun today. But we’ll see. Oh—I almost forgot.” Frank stretched to pluck a note from a bulletin board. “James Moselane called last night. Said it was urgent. He left a number.”
We both looked at the digits scribbled in lead pencil. “Switzerland?” I asked, staring at the country code in surprise.
Frank shrugged. “Just said it was urgent. Here.” He handed me the scrap of paper with a grimace, eager to rid himself of the responsibility. “Better call him right away.”
Professor Larkin’s office was no more welcoming than the lodge. A haze of dusty abandonment hung in the air, and the poor guppies were belly up in the fish tank. Dropping my mail on the desk, the first thing I did was march out into the bathroom and flush James’s number in the toilet along with the guppies. Coming back a little calmer, I turned on every working lamp and filled up the teakettle in preparation for a long afternoon of beating down my misery and getting my life back in order.
I had spent the weekend looking for my parents in every B&B in Cornwall and had finally found them in a tearoom in Falmouth. We had driven back to the Cotswolds together last night, talking about Granny all the way. After eighteen years of damming it all up behind a wall of nervous silence, my parents’ world was now so flooded with memories they barely knew which to cling to. Together we established what we already knew and patched it together with what I had learned in Finland. The picture of Granny that emerged was of a woman marred by loss and hardship, who was a lot stronger, and a good deal saner, than they had hitherto believed.
As hearts
ick and exhausted as I was, I should have liked to stay at home with my parents for a while, hiding in this refurbished world of memories. But I couldn’t stay away forever. I had students to face, colleagues to appease: It was a battle I could postpone no longer.
And so I had taken the Monday morning train to Oxford I knew so well, hoping to fall right back into my old routine. But as I sat there in my usual window seat, it felt as if everything had somehow changed around me—the colors were darker, the air strangely dead. Even the sounds of other people had changed from major to minor.
Before leaving Finland, I had tried to call Nick’s second speed dial … only to discover that his account had been canceled. No matter what I did, all I got was the same brief automated message in Arabic. I didn’t understand the words, but the meaning was clear: I had been cut off.
While crisscrossing Cornwall in search of my parents I had hogged every Internet connection I could find, searching for a direct number for the Aqrab Foundation office in Dubai. When I finally found it, I had jotted it down on a piece of paper in preparation for calling as soon as I returned to Oxford.
Staring at the number now, poised to make my big call on Professor Larkin’s antiquated telephone, I felt a familiar twinge of revulsion at the memory of my clash with Mr. al-Aqrab. But I couldn’t allow it to delay me any longer; my concern for Nick was so great I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep—I felt as if my soul was at war with my body, calling it a traitor for defaulting to Oxford rather than scouring the streets of Dubai.
The telephone rang only once before a receptionist picked up and transferred me to a Frenchman who—probably from his corner office, looking out over the Persian Gulf—made it abundantly clear the Aqrab Foundation and the Aqrab family were two separate entities. “I have no information to give you,” he said repeatedly, clearly following office protocol, “but I can connect you with our press office if you are interested in learning more about the foundation.”
