Island

by Johanna Skibsrud

  Kurtz was behind her now, peering over Lota’s shoulder at the screen. Lota could feel the pressure, the heat from her body. She looked up. Kurtz nodded. Lota pressed Send.

  There was a small whoosh and the browser automatically closed. Incredulously, Lota stared at the blank screen. She tried to imagine the words she’d copied disassembling—invisibly—being conducted underwater on their way to the capital and at least twenty-seven other destinations all over the world.

  It was—what? She looked at the time at the top of the screen. 4:44 A.M. on a day that, in the capital, had not even dawned.

  The air conditioner hummed noisily. Lota closed her eyes and little bright lights danced on the insides of her eyelids. When she opened them she saw that Kurtz had returned to the front of the room. She was standing between the lectern and the wall, in exactly the same place where, a half-hour before, Lota had seen Verbal.

  “Are you ready?” Kurtz panned the room with her gaze. “In under a minute,” she said, “I’m going to have the phones ringing off the hook.” She flipped her own phone open and raised a finger in the air as if testing the direction of the wind.

  Nobody said anything. A few silently nodded.

  Then Mad Max pushed through the door carrying three plastic water pitchers. He set the pitchers down in the middle of the room on a table that—for some unknown and now quite unimaginable reason—had been draped in a shiny mauve tablecloth. A line formed in front of the pitchers, which Lota joined. She stood with the others as they took turns pouring and then repouring water into little plastic cups.

  Bruno’s phone rang. He stepped away from the table. “Yes, hello?”

  Then it was Hannibal’s turn; then Killmonger’s; then Baby Jane’s. “Hello? Yes—that’s correct. The island is now under local authority and control.”

  “Hello?” It was Lota’s turn now.

  “After over three hundred years of systemic oppression…”

  “We have risen to our feet…”

  “The island is now…”

  “Yes, hello?”

  “Hello—”

  “Because it is better to sacrifice everything…”

  Lota tried to keep her eyes on her script. To read the whole thing through without stumbling or making a single mistake. The telephones buzzed and rang. Kurtz paced the room, sipping water from plastic cups, then destroying them. Their voices rose and fell, interrupting each other, repeating themselves at staggered intervals:

  “We consent to everything for it…”

  “We have risen to our feet…”

  “After over three hundred years of systemic oppression…”

  “We aspire to live and die as equals…”

  “Because it is better to sacrifice everything…”

  “We consent…”

  The phones had stopped ringing. The breaking-news reports had entered circulation: the story had been written. It was out of their hands.

  Kurtz and Mad Max left the room and there was a strange silence as the rest of them—awaiting orders and drugged with fatigue—sat slouched over the mauve tablecloth.

  A minute or two ticked by like that. Then, with a swift, angry motion, Norma scraped her chair back from the table. She crossed the room in a few quick steps and left through the open door. Mr. Joshua followed. Lota looked up briefly as they departed, then back to the table. She was drifting. Possibly she was already asleep.

  But then there was Baby Jane beside her. She’d pulled up a chair and sat down in it heavily, her arms folded. For a minute she just sat there like that looking at Lota, sucking at both cheeks.

  Finally: “It will kill Melea,” she said. Her voice was tense, but it didn’t waver. “You,” she said. “You’ll be all right—you’re young. But it will kill Melea.”

  Lota shook her head. “It was a mistake,” she said, her voice rising. “An accident.”

  “I’m not asking you to explain.”

  “One of them. He had a gun!”

  Baby Jane rolled her neck to one side slowly, watching Lota carefully the whole time, as though trying to figure her out—or make up her mind.

  Then she dropped her arms from her chest. “He was everything to Melea,” she said. Her voice was a whisper, barely audible above the hum of the air conditioning and the overhead fan. “But he wasn’t her son—he was hers.” She nodded toward the door.

  Lota followed her gaze. She blinked. Her head felt funny.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Baby Jane hissed. She leaned closer. “Verbal was hers, was Kurtz’s boy. He never knew it, of course. She and Melea both—they wanted it that way. He was just a baby when she left. It was only natural that Melea would raise him.”

  Baby Jane took a deep breath, as if she’d been underwater. She rocked back and looked at Lota, her eyes squinting slightly. Nearly ten seconds ticked by.

  Lota betrayed nothing. She sat still as a statue. She didn’t even blink.

  Baby Jane watched her carefully all that time. Then, as if she’d detected something in Lota that Lota herself couldn’t guess at, she nodded approvingly. “You see, Melea,” Baby Jane whispered, shaking her head, “she never had any children of her own. She was always worried because of it—worried that Kurtz would come back. Take her baby away.”

  Lota pressed her mouth into a tight line and looked back at Baby Jane without really seeing her. For the first time, she noticed the absolute and wholly impenetrable reality of the objects that surrounded her. For example, the singular existence of the chair beneath her. Of the table. The wrinkled curtains. The emptied water pitchers, the clock on the wall. She felt a dull sort of panic and glanced around quickly, as though for a way out. But there was no way out. There was only, as far as she could see, one object upon another—all the way down. The windows. The fluorescent light bulbs. The scrub grass outside.

  A shadow appeared in the door. Lota looked up. It was Kurtz. She stood with her hands on her hips, her feet planted firmly a good two feet apart, her chin jutted, her eyes like two stones.

  Lota looked at her. As if for the first time, she looked at her. Like she was an emptied water pitcher, or a chair, or a clock on the wall.

  “Mercer broke,” Kurtz said. “We’ve got the code.”

  SIXTEEN

  The voices were almost upon them before the ambassador woke. He started, his eyes flew open. He stared directly past Rachel, in the direction of the door—his face utterly blank. Rachel had inched her way back, had pressed herself as near as she was able against the adjacent wall, but the office was not large, and when the door burst open and a man and a woman walked in, she was sitting almost directly beneath them.

  “Hello, hello!” the man said. He was evidently drunk and held onto the edge of the door as he entered the room. The woman pushed past him. She was about a head shorter than the man and thin as a rail, but she looked tougher somehow. She wore a checkered newsboy cap pulled down low over her eyes and two long braids down the middle of her back.

  “Hold on!” the woman said. The man had looked right past Rachel, toward the ambassador, but the woman had immediately caught sight of her—was crouched beside her now, peering at her from under the brim of her hat. “What’s this now?” the woman said in a loud voice. “Am I seeing double?”

  The man was holding on to the doorknob with one hand and adjusting the bandana he wore on his head, Rambo-style, with the other. He still hadn’t seen Rachel—even though if he’d taken another step he would have stepped on her.

  “Oh ho! What’s this?” he said when he finally did see her. He leaned over the crouching woman, reeking of alcohol and sour sweat. Only the desk drawer was between Rachel and him. “You looking to ek-scape?”

  Rachel had intended to shake her head, but for some reason all she could manage was a single turn—a reflexive motion as if she’d been slapped.

  “Look at me,” the man said.

  Rachel turned her head painfully.

  The man began to laugh loudly. Then, stumbling a little, he moved
to the door, shut it, and reclined against the glass.

  Rachel glanced at the ambassador, who was still staring around, not really at anything—a look on his face like whatever was happening he already knew about, had already foreseen.

  Yes, he was indeed a rare old breed, Rachel thought. But now, instead of being comforted, she began to feel frightened by the ambassador’s extreme reserve, his blank, omniscient stare. She wished, again—desperately—that she’d never left her own office. She didn’t want to die with the ambassador looking on like that. Like he already knew everything that was about to happen; like he had nothing personally at stake.

  For the first time in her life, Rachel prayed. Briefly, violently, without any real hope, or forethought, or even words.

  The woman got up slowly, still staring at Rachel. She dragged over a chair and sat down in it carefully, crossing one thin leg over the other and adjusting her hat so that, though Rachel could still feel the woman’s eyes on her, she could no longer see them. “I think these two have some explaining to do,” she said.

  Her companion nodded. “You’re going to have to answer for yourselves sooner or later,” he said. Then he kicked at the drawer a little, wrenching Rachel’s wrists badly.

  “You know, don’t you,” the ambassador said in a flat voice—very empty and calm—“this is all very silly.”

  His eyes, when Rachel looked at them, were nearly opaque.

  “Whatever you’re after,” the ambassador continued coolly, “you simply won’t succeed in finding it. You can’t.”

  Far from soothing her, the ambassador’s words sounded hollow to Rachel—dangerously false.

  “According to our country’s chief security officer…” the ambassador continued.

  Rachel’s stomach twisted.

  “…in five years—maybe even less—the entire world…”

  The man had begun pacing the corner of the room, but now he lurched violently toward the ambassador. “What do you want with us, anyway?” He practically shouted the question, but the ambassador didn’t even flinch. “What do you want with us?” the man repeated. He was looking in the woman’s direction now, as though seeking approval or support. “What is this place to you?” he said, turning back to the ambassador. “A place to bury your secrets? To hide?”

  His gaze drifted back to the woman.

  “And we’re supposed to do what?” he shouted—more at her now than anyone else. “Just wait? Until you blow it up again?”

  “If there was any debt,” the ambassador said calmly, although it didn’t seem as though the man was talking to him anymore, “it’s been more than repaid.”

  The man started. He gave his head a quick, violent shake. The woman—without shifting her position—released a short laugh.

  The laugh seemed to trigger something in the man because, all at once, he lunged. He pressed his hands against the wall, his face hovering just inches above the ambassador’s own. “We know what you do here,” he said, and reached into the deep inside pocket of the zippered jacket he wore.

  Involuntarily, Rachel reeled back, hitting her head against the wall. But it was only a small metal flask that the man had retrieved. He opened it and raised it suggestively. “What do you say?” he asked the room, generally. “Take the edge off?”

  The ambassador must have nodded because the man began to pour the liquid out slowly; the ambassador opened his mouth like a bird.

  “Twenty-seven foreign prisoners,” the woman said in her surprisingly deep, clear voice. “Kept without documentation, or ever being charged with a crime. There’s evidence, you know. Of torture. Of deprivation. Of every imaginable abuse and indiscretion.”

  “You won’t succeed.” The ambassador’s eyes were glassy, his chin glistened.

  The man screwed the lid on the flask and slammed his fist against the ambassador’s desk. A stapler bounced and the pens and pencils in their holders rattled.

  “You think this is about freedom, am I right?” the ambassador said. “About history, perhaps. Or religion? Well, it’s not. I can tell you that right now. And you’ll discover it yourself, too. Sooner or later.”

  “Goddamnyou!” The man pitched forward and grabbed the ambassador by the throat.

  “Your leader, for example. If you think she’s a revolutionary…” The ambassador choked a little, snorted through his nose. “Well. You’ll find the truth out soon enough. She’s a regular crook, you know. She’s a spy.”

  “Goddamnyou!” The man closed his hands more firmly around the ambassador’s throat, but the ambassador showed no sign of either distress or alarm.

  He continued, gasping a little now: “She was one of ours once, you know…” Perhaps unconsciously, the man released some of the pressure from the ambassador’s throat. “Oh, you didn’t know that?” The ambassador coughed dryly. “She betrayed us. But that was a long time ago now. She will, almost certainly—”

  But then the air cracked. It was less a sound than a physical blow. The woman, still reclined slightly in the office chair, had pulled her gun out and fired. A few full seconds ticked by before Rachel was able to confirm that no one had been hit. The bullet had entered the wall, just above the ambassador’s head. The man looked—incredulously—at the hole in the wall, then at the ambassador, and then at the woman. He took a confused step toward her and held out his hand. But the woman had already fired again. With her companion out of the way, she aimed low. The bullet entered the ambassador’s stomach, just below the chest. The force propelled the ambassador’s body forward, but his eyes, uncannily, remained trained ahead—though he still did not appear to actually see anything.

  Rachel yelled out, but no one paid her any attention now. The man had spun back, stumbling against a chair—then he righted himself. All three of them watched as blood unfurled itself in a brilliant red band.

  There was a strange sound. A low hum that at first Rachel thought was coming from the ambassador—a sort of death rattle. But then the sound grew louder and she realized that it wasn’t coming from inside the room at all. She risked a glance at the woman and then the man. They stood frozen, eyes tipped toward the ceiling—listening to, but not yet recognizing the sound.

  Then—at once—they knew. Rachel watched as the woman’s, expression changed slowly, betraying—What? Confusion, certainly. Anger. Fear. And…something else. A sort of (or was this only a projection?) instinctive, physical relief.

  The sound grew louder. The woman got up slowly. She bent over the ambassador’s body toward the window ledge and looked out. She craned her thin neck one way and then the other. Then she pushed herself abruptly from the ledge. Leaning toward the man, she said something Rachel could not make out.

  The two of them hurried from the room. They swung the door behind them as they went, though not hard enough for it to actually close. Rachel could hear their muffled voices, the way their shoes squeaked against the tile floor.

  She turned toward the ambassador expectantly. As if she believed he might look up suddenly, and—his eyes staring off at some fixed point in the middle distance—explain to her what was happening in that cool, calm voice that suggested he knew, ahead of time, the way things would go.

  But the ambassador didn’t look up. The sound outside continued to grow louder—had become, by now, a dull roar—but the ambassador didn’t appear to be hearing it.

  Rachel wanted to shout. She wanted to leap at him, give his shoulders a shake. Wake up! she wanted to yell. Wake up! You were right all along! We’re saved! It was not just one or two planes she heard out there now; an entire air force seemed to be descending.

  There might, she considered, as the noise roared closer, still even be time. She could stop up the ambassador’s wound, maybe open an airway…

  But she felt frozen—her back still pressed firmly against the wall. And then it was too late. She heard steps returning, echoing up the stairwell and along the hall. Her heart, already pounding, began to beat so fiercely that she felt certain it would burst. She
pulled her knees up to her chest to contain it and felt something—a hard object in her pocket, digging sharply into her skin. Only then did she recall the necklace she’d picked up earlier that day: the snake curled into the shape of a hydrogen atom, seeming to eat its own tail. How stupid she’d been, she thought, as the footsteps drew nearer, how naive. To have thought that, from all this, something could be taken away.

  The woman banged into the office again—alone this time. The cap she wore was pulled down low, but Rachel could just make out the strange pale glow of her eyes. She stared into that glow and was surprised to feel a little like how the ambassador had looked: oddly indifferent, aloof.

  Because, it didn’t matter! No, Rachel thought, none of it mattered anymore…Help had arrived. Just as the ambassador—and Rachel herself, deep down—had always known it would.

  Only why, oh why, she couldn’t help thinking, had it taken so long? Bradley was dead. So, no doubt, was the ambassador. And who knew what had happened to Phil, to everyone else…

  But the thought dissipated quickly, was drowned out by the single-minded roar of the approaching aircraft—by their undeniable proximity and intent.

  There must, after all, have been some reason. It would all—yes, and very soon now—be explained.

  Yes, very soon, thought Rachel, as the woman, shrugging off Rachel’s gaze, moved to the middle of the room, she herself would be on board one of those planes. Very soon now she’d be touching down in the capital. Very soon…

  Tears of relief welled in Rachel’s eyes. All of this, plus everything else she’d worried about over the past six months, and even longer than that, would be dissolved instantly—as Ray’s arms wrapped around her shoulders, as she folded Zoe into her own.

  The woman’s eyes snapped up. She took a few quick steps toward the window and, leaning again across the ambassador, craned her neck to look up at the sky. The planes, Rachel thought, must be just overhead. She practically shook with joy—and yet, as she looked at the younger woman, whose face was hidden from her again now, she felt…sorry. Yes. That was it. She’d tell Ray as soon as she saw him. She felt goddamned sorry for all of it! Sorry for them all!