Heroic Measures (11 page)

“Anything new?” Alex asks him.

“He still won’t talk to his mother,” says the counterman.

They turn east toward home. Mr. Rahim, in only shirt-sleeves,
is smoking in his open doorway. He smiles when he see them, delicately tamps out his cigarette, and inserts it back into the pack to smoke later.

“What’s the latest?” Alex asks.

“According to the forensic professor lady? Or my wife?” Mr. Rahim says. “The forensic lady believes Pamir won’t speak to his mother because he already has a foot in the next world and he’s frightened his mother’s voice might call him back. My wife thinks Pamir is too ashamed to speak to his mother. She has relatives by marriage from those same Afghanistan mountains; she says the villagers are as simple as beasts. My wife’s convinced Pamir’s on drugs: she thinks that stupid girl yesterday wasn’t his hostage; she was his dealer.”

“What do you think?” Alex asks.

“I think before Pamir took refuge in Bed Bath and Beyond, he had no bomb or weapons or leverage, and now he has steak knives and hostages. How’s Miss Dottie?”

“She’s coming home tomorrow,” Ruth says.

“You still miss your mommy and daddy?” asks the nurse, returning with a bowl of food, Dorothy’s first real meal in days. As preoccupied as her ward mates are with contributing to the barking, they also smell her food. The Mexican hairless’s high notes, already shrill, go up an octave. The pug’s bulbous black eyes practically pop out with each yelp.

Though Dorothy is still too despondent to have an appetite, she doesn’t want these two to get her meal. She crouches over her bowl, curls back her black lips, and bears
her yellow teeth. Her threat does no good. She can sense the other dogs’ agitation fueling their appetites; anxiousness is making them ravenous.

Lest she have to share, Dorothy forces herself to eat. She takes a small bite and chews, and as she chews, something unexpected happens. She no longer smells the other dogs, only meat; she no longer hears the barking hysteria, only herself chewing. The circumference of her bowl might as well be the whole globe; she sees nothing else. And she no longer aches for Ruth and Alex. While she’s eating, nothing else is real.

“I’M NOT SURPRISED PAMIR IS HOLDING HIS
hostages in kitchenware,” says the forensic psychologist as Alex and Ruth, shedding their overcoats, turn on their television. “Most suicide bombers target places where crowds gather for food—open markets, cafes, restaurants. Food is culture and it’s our culture they want to blow up.”

“Try another channel,” Ruth says.

Alex switches to the next network, Fox News, a station Ruth normally refuses to watch. This afternoon, she doesn’t say a word.

“One tactical possibility is the lone sniper,” speculates a retired general with appallingly dyed hair. “If a sniper can crawl undetected through the air-conditioning ducts between the floors, he might get a clean shot at Pamir, without endangering the hostages.”

“I hope Pamir isn’t watching this in the store,” Alex says.

“I don’t think they sell TVs.”

Alex presses ahead to the next news channel.

“Tokyo’s market opens in less than the four minutes,” says a beautiful Singaporean with a swan-length neck.
“How will world markets react to New York’s crisis?” she asks her guest, a stock analyst with a walleye who is obviously smitten by her.

“I’m going to check the messages to see if the realtor called,” Ruth says. “She must be wondering where we are?”

“If she called, it’s only to pressure us,” Alex calls after her as she disappears into the bedroom. “She doesn’t expect anyone to bring over a check right now.” He gets up and goes into the kitchen. All he’s had to eat today was a bran muffin. He opens the fridge—an iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and a grapefruit. He needs something more comforting. He opens the freezer—mushroom barley soup! From Fairway! He takes out the ice-hard container, opens the microwave, sets it on the lazy Susan, and presses high. The microwave hums loudly. He peers into its window and watches the soup twirl in place, like a ballerina in a music box.

“Where are you? I left a message on your cell. Please call me as soon as you get this,” says the realtor’s dry, vexed voice on their answering machine.

A second message plays, “The sellers are getting anxious. They want me to open the bidding again if you don’t get here in the next ten minutes.”

Not quite sure what she’s going to tell the realtor—the truth, they’re home, or a white lie, they’re running late— Ruth reaches for the phone when it suddenly rings: she pulls back her hand as if the phone had tried to bite her.

“The other party, the ones whose letter didn’t win the
tie,” says the answering machine, “just phoned to say they’re seriously considering making a counteroffer. Call me ASAP.”

Had the realtor simply said the other party was still interested, Ruth would have believed her, but Alex is right, no one makes a counteroffer right now.

She waits a moment, and then dials the realtor back. “We’re still at the animal hospital. No one’s being allowed to leave. The police say it’s too dangerous. Pamir is just around the corner at Bed Bath and Beyond. We’re in the red zone,” she says, when what she really means to tell the realtor is,
We haven’t sold the cow yet. We will not be pressured
.

Ruth walks into the kitchen just as the soup ends its dance.

“Who called?” Alex asks.

“You were so right. The realtor only wants to pressure us.”

She takes two bowls out of the cupboard, and then looks for the ladle. In the living room, the television begins playing the fully orchestrated
Breaking News
theme song. It might as well be a bugle calling Alex to arms. He hurries back to his post on the sofa. Despite the martial music, the screen is as motionless as a still photograph: a long shot, probably taken from a rooftop, of an eerily empty First Avenue, save for Pamir’s mother, tiny against the cityscape, now surrounded by helmeted silhouettes acting as bodyguards. The black garment and her protectors progress at a very slow crawl up the avenue. She looks, to Alex, like a black insect with eighteen legs.

“You think Pamir’s finally going to talk to his mother?” Ruth asks, a soup bowl in each hand. She sits beside him.

“I think his mother wants to talk to her son in person. Those policeman appear to be leading her to him,” Alex says, taking his hot bowl and stirring his soup. He thinks he sees movement behind the store windows, though Pamir’s mother is still a good five hundred yards away from the entrance. In the army, his job had been to spot targets for snipers.

“Do you think his mother’s going to ask him to surrender?” Ruth asks.

“Why else would she go to him?”

The eighteen legs suddenly stop. The bodyguards raise their shields to envelop the black garment, like a steel carapace. A ribbon of words scrolls across the screen’s bottom:
The shield material is able to withstand a projectile traveling at velocities of up to 1.5 km/second. This is approximately equivalent to dropping four diesel locomotives onto an area the size of one’s fingernail
.

“What are they waiting for?” Ruth says.

“They’re probably hoping to lure him out,” Alex says, taking his first taste of soup. Even before the spoon reaches his lips, he suspects it’s still too hot to eat, but he takes a sip anyway. He scalds his tongue, but he doesn’t lose his focus. Something is happening behind the glass. The shadows are congealing into a solid entity: Pamir must be rounding up his hostages.

The phone rings. Without taking his eyes off the store window, no bigger than a postage stamp on the screen, he reaches for the phone with his free hand, but Ruth stops him.

“What if it’s the realtor?” she says.

“I’ll tell her what you told her: she should stop pestering us. We’ll bring over the deposit as soon as it’s safe go outside again,” he says.

“I told her we were still at the animal hospital, in some kind of lockdown.”

“Why did you lie?”

The answering machine picks up. Ruth disappears into the bedroom to listen, while Alex remains on the sofa, watching the congealed shadow. It appears to be inching toward the store’s main entrance on a great many legs, too.

“We’re at the beach house,” says the answering machine. “Rudolph insisted we get out of the city.”

Ruth lifts the receiver. “May.”

“How’s Dorothy?”

“She’s walking. She’s coming home tomorrow.”

“You and Alex must be so relieved.”

“You can’t imagine.”

“Is anything happening? Our TV isn’t working. There’s six feet of snow on the roof. Rudolph’s on the ladder right now trying to fix the cable. I told him he’d have been safer staying the city and shopping at Bed Bath and Beyond.”

“I think Pamir’s about to give himself up. His mother is standing outside the store right now,” Ruth says.

“Rudolph!” May shouts. “Get off the ladder and pick up the other extension. I’m on the phone with Ruth. Pamir is about to turn himself in.”

Ruth takes the cordless back into the living room.

“Is it the realtor?” Alex asks.

“May. Their TV isn’t working.”

Ruth sits beside him on the sofa and straightens her
glasses. “Nothing’s happening,” she tells May. “His mother and her bodyguards are still standing in the middle of the street.”

“Look at the window,” Alex says, pointing to the screen.

It’s a long shot of an empty First Avenue. There must be a thousand windows. “Which window?”

“The one directly below the Beyond sign.”

Ruth now sees the shadow, too. “Something’s going on in the store,” she tells May.

The shadow slowly disappears from the window and reappears just behind the entry doors.

“I think he’s coming out with the hostages,” Ruth tells May.

“Or maybe he’s trading the hostages for his mother,” Alex says, picking up the living room extension.

“What kind of trade is that?” Rudolph asks, picking up his end.

Suddenly, glass appears to blow apart exactly where the shadow had stood. Ruth’s sure a bomb went off. “Oh my God,” she mutters before realizing that the flash of glass was only the automatic doors springing open.

“He blew himself up?” Rudolph asks.

“God help us,” May says.

“No, no,” Ruth says. “Nothing’s happened.”

The shadow begins stepping into the daylight. Ruth can now distinguish separate beings, ten terrified human shields.

“The hostages are coming out,” she tells May and Rudolph, “but we don’t know if Pamir is hiding behind them or back in the store.”

“What does the newscaster think?” May asks.

“He’s quiet for once,” Ruth says.

“He doesn’t know anymore than we do,” Alex offers.

“When has that stopped him before?” Rudolph asks.

Alex points to the screen as if all four of them can see it. “Pamir’s directly behind the two women in front. See how stiffly they’re walking, as if they’re on a single leash.”

“Where’s his mother?” May asks.

“Why don’t they just shoot him,” Rudolph says.

The hostages come to a jerky standstill just outside the store. Their backs are to Pamir; their terrified visages face Ruth and Alex. No one moves, not even to shift their weight. One woman appears to be praying. Slowly, from behind the frieze of petrified grimaces, a hand emerges waving a white bath towel.

“He’s surrendering!” Ruth gasps, expecting helmeted silhouettes to dash over and free the hostages, but no one approaches. “Why doesn’t someone do something?”

“They’re not doing anything?” Rudolph asks.

“He may have a bomb,” Alex answers.

“Please dear God,” May whispers.

A second hand rises above the hostages’ heads.

“Pamir has both hands up,” comments the newscaster, as if Ruth couldn’t see the second hand for herself.

“What did he say?” Rudolph asks.

“Pamir’s hands are up; he’s getting ready to surrender,” Alex says.

“Does that mean he can’t press the button?” May asks.

“What button?” Rudolph says.

The shell of hostages suddenly cracks around Pamir, and the dazed men and women half run, half stumble toward helmeted silhouettes ready to shield them.

“The hostages are free,” Alex tells Rudolph and May.

Pamir’s alone on the sidewalk. Keeping his hands above his head, he drops to his knees and lets go of the towel. Ruth can’t take her eyes off the towel, so clean and white on the filthy gray sidewalk beside the kneeling figure. Pamir looks around for, Ruth assumes, his mother. In the lower corner of the screen, she notices a dog, a Belgian shepherd, sitting patiently beside its handler, a short woman in army fatigues. The soldier unclips the dog’s lead and the shepherd bounds toward Pamir, past the fleeing hostages with their shielded escorts. With fearless curiosity and relentless thoroughness, the dog circles Pamir, sniffing under his coat, in his pockets, up his sleeves, around his crotch. Pamir wears the same petrified grimace as his hostages.

“This Israeli-trained K-nine bomb sniffer is able to detect over twenty different kinds of explosives,” comments the newscaster.

“What’s he saying about Israel?” Rudolph asks.

When the dog is finished, it lies still as a sphinx on the pavement beside Pamir.

“Does he have a bomb?” May asks.

“We don’t know. The dog is just lying there,” Ruth says.

“What dog?” Rudolph asks.

“If Pamir had a bomb, the handler would have called the dog back,” Alex says.

“These K-nine bomb sniffers have a ninety-six percent success rate,” comments the newscaster.

“What about the other four percent?” Ruth asks.

The screen’s bottom is now darkening with armored equipment, as if the picture were going black from the
bottom up. Ruth can’t distinguish machinery from men. Pamir remains on his knees, but he’s alone now.

Where’s the dog? she thinks.

A bullhorn blasts, but before Ruth can make out what’s being said the words break into echoes against the buildings. Pamir lowers his hands and begins struggling to open his coat, a puffy, hooded gray parka that almost reaches his knees. He tugs at the zipper, but he can’t seem to undo it. The teeth appear to be caught on something. In his panic to get the coat open, he pulls on the zipper as if it is a rip-cord and he is in freefall. Ruth can’t tell if the camera is running in slow motion, or her mind is, but Pamir seems to be fighting with his zipper for an eternity.

Suddenly, white feathers appear to hang in the air all around him. Only when the feathers settle does Ruth realize Pamir’s ripped his parka in two to get it off. He pulls what remains of it over his head. Ruth can see he isn’t strapped with explosives. The bullhorn barks again, and Pamir tosses his coat into the street. He peels off his sweater, unbuttons his shirt, and throws them on top. Clad only in a T-shirt, he slowly rises to his feet and removes his sneakers and socks, flings them into the pile, too. “The pants,” the bullhorn barks. He undoes his belt, zipper, and steps out of his pants. Shivering, he kicks them away with his bare foot. He pulls his T-shirt over his head, and leaves his hands up in the air, but the bullhorn’s not satisfied. It barks and barks until he takes off his underwear and lies down on the ground, spread-eagle. The station discreetly covers his derriere with what looks like a smear of Vaseline.