The Messenger (7 page)

She has done it!

Yes, it is true—to a certain degree she has already completed her mission. Perhaps her shaking is only relief at having not been caught. It catches in her throat for a moment, and she laughs. Below her a steady stream of cars surge up … 
Broadway
.

The hotel boy is dead now too, she realizes. Between her shoulders there is a chill and she goes back to the bed and tries not to think of him. Or the nice woman … Sally.

All soldiers get like this, she reminds herself. Anyone when they go into combat. The young recruit has his first taste of war, his first sight of the gore … In the movies they always throw up. But no, that’s not it, she thinks, because she’s seen gore, she’s seen people killed. Seen her brothers’ bodies after they left them to rot in the street.

She sets up her laptop, registers on the hotel’s wireless, goes online and searches “smallpox.” There is a lot on the Web about the disease, and even more on biological warfare. Indeed, everything is as she has been told in Berlin.

Smallpox—so dangerous that it became the first disease ever totally eradicated by humans, finally conquered in 1979.

Apparently “eradication” must have meant different things to different people. The superpowers held back samples for research
purposes in secret laboratories. A defector from the Soviet Biopreparat blew the whistle on extensive manufacturing operations, which revealed twenty tons of smallpox stored in Zagorsk.

The disease was ancient and terrifying. It had been used as a weapon ever since men discovered that it could be spread from person to person. It was called a pox because of the pustules that erupted on the skin of the patient.

The symptoms were, in the beginning, similar to an ordinary flu—fatigue leading to a fever. The patient would have vivid dreams that verged on hallucinations. A sore throat might or might not lead to a cough, but from that point, the virus was easily spread.

She searches until she comes up with a full description of the way she will die. Once again she is given an account of the symptoms: the bad cold, fever, nausea, vivid dreams, and a spreading rash … There are archival photographs of long-dead victims sitting up in bed with pustules crowding across their faces like a swarm of bees.

There is more, but she stops.

So … these invisible things, these creatures on her skin, in her hair, in her blood and breath—they are her bomb, her exploding vest. They are her box cutter and the poisoned tip of her arrow. Something special has been made, some technological feat that she can be proud of. Weaponized and put in a bottle like cough syrup.

She looks around the room, walks over to the windows.

Is this terror? she asks herself. Is she not terrified? Her palms are cold. She has a slight headache; looking down onto the street, she feels dizzy. Is she getting sick?

She presses her hands to the glass and tries to see down over the edge of the building. Some people fall to their deaths. Others jump. Either way, it would be terrible, she thinks—eyes open, screaming, watching the street rising up to you.

It is like that for her now. Nothing more to lose.

Is she just simply afraid of dying?

She clicks open her email … and sure enough there is a draft of a supposedly unfinished message waiting. When she opens it there are no instructions, only a long list of targets. Everything in alphabetical order, which is to say, no order at all. Hospitals, banks, police stations. Centers of command and control. She scrolls all the way to the bottom. At least ten pages’ worth if she was insane enough to print it out.

She finds a phone book in the desk, it’s four inches thick and weighs ten pounds. At the back are sections on Government Services, Medical Services. She goes back to the top of the email list and reads down again. Nothing there that she can’t find in the phone book.

She erases the draft. No evidence unless they seize her hard drive.

Daria sits there for a moment. Takes a deep breath. Her heart is racing and she decides that the thing to do is get right to work while whatever she’s poured over her hands, massaged through her hair, or had impregnated in the fabric of her clothes still lives.

Down in the restaurant she leafs through the tourist guide and works out her own list of targets. It’s not exactly confidence inspiring that Berlin has given her the absolute minimum: plane tickets, credit cards, and a list that includes everything under the sun. Okay, she’ll have to make it up as she goes along, and right now her idea is to spread the germs to every high-trafficked place in the city.

To be honest, she is a little worried about playing on the details about
Klic!
magazine. She can pass out business cards all she wants, and there’s even a website with a
Contact Us
button in four languages.
Let’s imagine that someone might eventually answer the phone: Would they back her up? How is she to know? What would Ali do?

While waiting for her espresso, she looks at her hands, turning them over. The skin is just as before, no rash or tenderness she can feel. The toiletry kit survived riding in her checked luggage—toothpaste, moisturizer, lipsticks. Undoubtedly they have been augmented with the virus. She’s not to waste it.

Sooner or later she’ll need to take a shower. But right now, the important thing to do is to mingle. To be the arrow she was designed to be: a trendy young journalist from abroad, newly arrived on a mission to pump up the glamour of the Big Apple and sell to teens the indescribable thrill of being anywhere else other than at home with your parents.

She’s allowed the smiling young men and women who staff the front desk to advise her with directions. She tips generously to everyone,
ciao
this and
grazie
that.

She walks out the doors.

The weather is fine this late September afternoon, the air clean, a breeze that comes and goes, smelling of oak leaves and soggy grass, and she decides to begin her campaign of destruction with a stroll through Central Park.

If they made the movie of her life, it would have to include this triumphant sequence—Natalie Portman walking along, staring at the cliff faces of the huge buildings, a stainless-steel sculpture of the globe, a bronze of a long-dead explorer. Natalie waiting to cross the river of traffic … then finally breaking away from the crowd and into the great park, smiling at the babies, giving way to the joggers. Her passionate movie-star heart thrilling to the beauty of the landscape, swept across it, drawn like an arrow to the Guggenheim Museum.

She recognizes it from art books. Yes, the swirling white Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. She pays, checks her jacket and bag, and strolls up the endless ramp that winds ever higher through the gallery, musing on where she should be going next. Her hands linger on the railings. The muted sounds
and fantastic art wash over her. She visits the bathrooms. There’s something thrilling about knowing that by tomorrow the process by which she infects a building will be second nature.

She gets to the top of the spiral, then takes the elevator back down, reclaims her jacket and bag, and gets a cab. The driver is pitch-black. America has the largest number of black people she has ever seen. “I’d like to visit the site of the Twin Towers,” she says.

“Ground Zero? Of course, ma’am,” the man says, and she recognizes his accent as from somewhere in the Caribbean.

“If I go there, is it far to get to the Underground?”

“You mean the subway? No, ma’am. There are many stops. Very easy.”

“I’m a reporter and I’m writing about what people do in New York City,” she says, taking the opportunity to practice her story.

“I see, I see,” the man says. He steps on the brakes abruptly and she sits back and looks for the seat belt. “These people are crazy,” the driver mutters.

They duck and weave through the lanes of traffic. It is an odd sensation to simply trust the cabdriver as the city rushes by. Infinite, anonymous, gargantuan. There are flashes of recognition, landmarks she’s seen many times via film and television. It takes at least a half hour to make the trip through the gridlocked streets.

And then … the sky seems to open up and she is stunned at how big the site is.… The scale is gigantic. Acres and acres of destruction. She had no idea. She only knows the images she has seen of the collapse, and no television can really convey the scale of it.

Except for the historical significance, it’s a boring neighborhood, mostly bankers and lawyers and a steady swarm of pilgrims—tourists who come in all sizes, students, singletons, the elderly with their canes, chairs, scooters, and walkers, all paying homage to the great strike against Satan that occurred on this spot on the eleventh of September, 2001.

The site itself is fenced off with blue plastic billboards covered with Web addresses. An expanse of ruined earth better left to weeds, but now crammed with pipes and tunnels, cement mixers and cranes, men and women toiling in reflective vests and hard hats around the
red steel skeleton of the promised replacement: an even more iconic twisting glass icicle called One World Trade Center. She walks until she comes upon the memorial park that has been built on the footprint of the original two towers. Bronze barricades inscribed with the names of the dead. A great many newly planted trees with reflecting pools and waterfalls to generate white noise that will soothe visitors and help them forget what they have come there to remember.

It’s all she can do to keep from shouting. She catches herself grinning and tries to put on a serious expression, but it’s almost impossible. Oh! What an extraordinary accomplishment: dedicated martyrs, language training, a few weeks of flying lessons, and some box cutters. What did 9/11 do to the United States? To the whole world! Now the fear is palpable, written in full-body scanners and concrete barriers. Any time an American has to endure the security searches at an airport, or go through a metal detector at a sporting event, city hall, or federal building, they know who is really winning the battle. The Americans and their allies could send their commandos to kill Bin Laden, orbit their drones over the mountains of Afghanistan for a full eon and the righteous would still rise up to oppose them.

Above her the skeleton rises. Birds wheel. White clouds form and re-form in a blue sky. Music, the sound of the traffic, horns blaring, brakes squealing, engines roaring. She looks up and turns on the sidewalk. It all circles above her.

Smiling, tears in her dark eyes. Surrounded by the clanking monster; the snapping of the welders, the generators, the cement pumpers and dump trucks as they climb the dusty ramps in and out of the sprawling building site—

Are they thinking of this rebuilding as a symbol of defiance? Of victory? Getting on top again? Celebrating their indomitability as they reclaim their hallowed ground?

It is nothing. It is less than nothing.

* * *

From her handy tourist map she has discovered that she is near Wall Street. Logically, most of the lesser demons who maintain the devil’s heartbeat make their living inside these surrounding offices, but there are couriers, deliverymen, clients, and functionaries coming and going, everyone constrained by the vehicles whizzing by.

It is a cool autumn day. She’ll walk.

The Twin Towers are more than just symbolic, but striking at Wall Street means driving her arrow into the heart of the capitalist system that powers all of godless America. There are many great financial temples on this street. All she has to do is visit them one at a time.

Playing her part, she arrives at the Exchange and seeks out a publicist. She is directed to an obviously gay man, somewhat over forty, who is empowered to deal with inquiries from the media. She assures him that she is harmless, explains the rather insubstantial publishing philosophy of
Klic!
, and after a few laughs is shuffled off to Candace and Sharee, two admin assistants.

“You know, it’s silly, really, but it’s good publicity. We are a magazine primarily for teenage girls and maybe a few boys. It’s about the reader going to New York City and meeting someone, an ordinary guy, cute, attractive, but one who is part of the workforce, you know?” she explains, smiling all the time.

“Sure. Certainly. Romance.” Candace and Sharee exchange a look.

“That’s right. For young people. I need an interview, just a very little interview. It’s only a hundred words. It’s nothing. One of the boys who works here, who he is, what special music he likes. He is single, we hope, but is he seeing anyone? Does he like European girls? That would be a plus.”

“Mmmm …”

“You know, a cute guy.”

“Sure. We have some of them,” Candace says. She shrugs and looks over to Sharee, who agrees.

“One of those ones who waves his arms around all the time, all excited. You see them, you know … 
bidding
.”

“A floor trader.”

“They have jackets on, and it’s obviously hard work, I know.”

“Oh, those guys, yeah. They have a lot of stress.”

“And so they need a girlfriend …” They all laugh. Candace and Sharee take her out on the floor and point out two or three young men. She takes her time, deciding.

“Interview?” one of the traders asks Candace as he passes by.

“That’s right.
Sports Illustrated
for women—swimsuit issue.”

“Not me,” he says. “Don’t wanna scare my daughter …”

Daria takes a minute or two before picking one out. Candace and Sharee set her up in the coffee room, where he comes to meet her once he’s on his break. She gets his name, gets his vitals, a little background about how he got into the business. What’s his favorite movie? Hobbies, sports? Does he have a girlfriend? Who is his biggest hero?